Apparently they're on the verge of insolvency and a takeover by the WRU is imminent.
Professional sport in Cardiff is in a sorry state of affairs.
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Apparently they're on the verge of insolvency and a takeover by the WRU is imminent.
Professional sport in Cardiff is in a sorry state of affairs.
Cardiff is arguably the worst sports supporting major city in the UK by the citys own inhabitants.
Seems like poor finances is something that is catching up to a lot of rugby clubs even in richer leagues. At least some of those clubs had some good times along the way, Cardiff haven't.
Administration, not Insolvency.
If they went insolvent there wouldn't be anything for the WRU to take over.
By what metric? Over the past few years we’ve got a football team that’s averaged 15k-20k, a rugby team averaging ~8k and an Ice Hockey team averaging 3k.
I’d guess that’s better ratios per population than the likes of Reading, Milton Keynes, Norwich, Bournemouth, Peterborough and probably several other cities depending on your definition of “major”.
2018 could be argued that Cardiff’s sporting teams were very successful.
Football promotion to PL.
Rugby won the equivalent of the UEFA cup.
Ice Hockey won league and playoffs.
Is Sunderland a major city in your eyes? The football team gets ~35k but that’s pretty much it as far as sports goes. There’s no major rugby, cricket, basketball or ice hockey teams in the city.
Surely Sunderland should be considered a worse “[B]sports[B\] supporting city” when their next best supported sport measures their crowds in the tens or low hundreds.
:hehe:
Their football team dwarf Cardiff football, rugby and ice hockey put together.
By the way, Welsh Fire / Glamorgan represent a country / county, that is not a Cardiff sports team.
Next you’ll be arguing for the crowds at Wales Egg, which is mainly made up of women from the valleys.
You said sports, plural. Sunderland has one singular well supported team.
On Jan 1st both Cardiff Rugby and Cardiff City played at home at 3pm. The rugby had a crowd of 12,100 and the football was 19,100.
On the 25th both teams again played on the same day. The rugby had 11,700 and the football 19,500.
So 31k+ on both occasions excluding the Devils. Pretty comparable to Sunderland after all it seems.
Going off the ‘attendances’ thing, I often wonder had rugby not been the sport in this area that had been foisted on us from a young age, very different from the majority of English towns & cities, how many top rugby players would have made it as top footballers. I’m thinking of some of the outstanding half backs, centres, wingers that Wales have produced, not so much now but, over the years. Our pool of sporting youth is quite small given our population and to be split between the two sports dilutes it even more.
Similar size countries such as Uruguay, Croatia have shone on the world football stage due to the football, football, football mantra bred into them from toddlers. I’d imagine. I s’pose rugby aficionados could say the same vice-versa but that doesn’t concern me.
That is true of Croatia but not sure about Uruguay.
Rugby is a major sport in Uruguay and they have been quite successful in recent decades.
Wales population: 3,107,500. Registered Rugby Union players: 79,800.
Uruguay population: 3,388,000. Registered Rugby Union players: 37,463.
Not comparable in the slightest.
Go off the average attendances, not cherry pick when they had a good weekend of attendances over the festive season, and taken into account the size of the city's its not even close.
Also, as you keep avoiding the point, I will repeat it again - Half of Cardiff City FCs support is not even from the City so make sure you divide Cardiff City FCs average attendance in half when you perform another round of mental gymnastics to try and support your opinion.
Rugby definitely has a presence in Uruguay. They have a professional team in the Super Rugby Americas league, which is for South American teams. I don't think the team -Penerol rugby (tied to the massive football team of the same name)- ever get more than s few thousand though.
You can see on their main sports paper website, rugby is the third tab but it's way way behind football.
https://www.elpais.com.uy/ovacion
They do play entertaining stuff mind and beat Fiji in the 2019 world cup!