..of eggs and ovoids.

Suspect none of the current six would want the reduced revenues of swapping one of the current group with Georgia or Romania. Which speaks volumes about the priorities of the game.

Rugby is a broken sport on lots of levels. Everyone I know who watches rugby think the RWC needs to change. Combination of less teams in it and more games to improve lesser teams. But as pointed out powers that be don't really want the lesser teams to improve because they might become better than the established teams.

At club level my Harlequins season ticket is 50% more expensive than my Forest one. For just under half the number of games. The prices are unsustainable, especially when the star names people want to see are away for international games half the time. Problem rugby has is it's not popular enough to drive TV money to pay players and there is only so much/so long you can try and plug that gap with ticket prices.

Wow. So £75+ per game?

11 games (9 league now with failed clubs) and 2 Europe. They claim 4 more but they are meaningless pre season friendly equivalents to try to justify. Costs was about 950 I think so nearer £85.

There are cheaper ones but my Forest one is almost most expensive at c650 for 19 games so about £35.

Quin's went up about £200 this year, with lots of charts showing how comparable events were more expensive (eg most expensive Chelsea and Arsenal season tickets, Lords cricket, Royal Ascot!. Totally flawed comparisons, the football ones didn't even adjust for number of games just total price.

And they still make losses. As I said the sport is broken not sure it can recover.

I presume that the TV rights to the club game are all sold away to subscription services, whereas the international games are free-to-air, thus ensuring that people who may want to develop an interest in the sport get England and the Six Nations injected into their eyeballs, but barely register that Harlequins even exist.. this further entrenching the idea that international rugby is the one that matters?

I haven’t watched any of the World Cup because the rights here are with a streaming service I don’t have. Coupled with the usual inconvenient match times, it’s another case of the proliferation of streaming services, each wanting their own exclusive content, limiting access to sport.

I would ban exclusive TV rights deals. They are bad for consumers. You can launch a standalone service if you want (and thus the consumer can choose to pay your price for your content) but if you sell to an aggregated platform with any kind of bundled pricing, then you have to sell to more than one.

Football down here is split over four streamers. Two of which don’t really have any other sports content. It’s very silly.

Six Nations is free channels as is RWC this time, though only the final is a UK protected event so talk it could go to a pay service next time for the rest. Other internationals have been on Amazon Prime recently.

Club game is pay TV too so not helpful if they are trying to increase viewers.

There's further complications as Premiership Rugby Limited sold 25% of themselves to a PE fund (CVC managed)). Which gave them a windfall now gone and less income for clubs ongoing. Pandemic loans needing paying back to government are a further problem.

It's a tough fix and noone seems to really be trying.

Blimey.

NZ loves rugby again today

Fiji is paging @Ingo.

Withh horses and horses.

All three quarter finals so far have been excellent. I don’t like the music they play to try and create some atmosphere, but apart from that World Cup rugby is a great spectator sport.

This one is the best half of rugby I've ever watched I think

So, last four winners - South Africa, New Zealand, New Zealand, South Africa. Current odds on the most likely final - 1/4 New Zealand v South Africa.

Wet look knitwear? Morning Farmer Lister!