We find ourselves in rugby's waiting room. The domestic season is done and dusted. the summer tour not yet started. Thoughts reflect on' plays long since called, decisions still marginal and opportunities taken and missed. Season tickets, pride and regret are now the lingua franca in warming June days as social media is trawled for new signings and new playing jerseys for next season. A Season Ticket, with accompanying super slo mo videos channeling the gravitas of Dylan Thomas and Richard Burton, offers the promise of long term commitment to fixtures not yet released, a sonnet to hopeful kick off times, a love letter to time spent on Terrace or in Stand.
The Season Ticket is summer's one big ask from clubs fighting for financial stability.
Blindly purchasing, purposefully supporting, testing patience all seem to cover what is for some an important part of being a supporter. In a world which craves certainty and order it seems rugby union and the URC in particular like to play a game of indifference, relying on the certainty of chance, safe in the knowledge television will call the shots and the executive will play its part with supine obedience. A fixture list supporters can plan around? You must be mad.
Kick off times which sound like the basis of an old Grammar School History test: 1935, 1945, 2000, 1405, 1735, clearly play no part in consideration of prospective attendance.
Who doesn't love a walk back to the station past 2200 on a Saturday with a tired over excited 9 year old (or 89 year old )? Right when Cardiff City centre is ramping up its tribute act to the strip in Magaluf. At the other extreme, 1700 on a Sunday where the shadow of 'work tomorrow' lurks in every doorway. Further, visiting supporters, passport in hand, changed currency laden, travel insuranced up are seemingly seen as an optional extras by aloof administrators, indifferent broadcasters and disinterested governing bodies whom possess neither the wit nor wisdom to understand the harm.
Rugby is of course but one sport in a sea of a hundred things to do on a weekend, all vying for attention and our hard pressed cash and even harder pressed time. This makes the nonsense of unknown or moveable kick off times even more unfathomable. Is it a huge leap to imagine the league reaching out to its teams and giving them all, with an equal hearing, a preferred slot? Would that ostensible common decency be too much for an executive? Would the gang of broadcasters engage and rather than expect us to be waiting for the game, make it unmissable, central, important, regular, even habit forming?
It would seem that along with commercial indifference and self awareness deficiency syndrome, the URC are determined to tie hands behind the backs of clubs. It seems they and league sponsors like the visuals of half empty stadia, they enjoy the spray of kick off times littering the weekend like chip wrappers on Caroline St Sunday mornings and positively embrace the jet lagged fixture list as if a precious jewel. For all this and despite the lament and hand wringing of this author, regularity of events would be most welcome, especially 1430 on a Saturday.
By all accounts, Cardiff supporters have answered the call - of course we have, we are tidy - but that does not mean all is rosy in the rugby garden. Far from it, very far from it. But imagine if there were regular, family friendly kick off times at CAP (and other grounds in Wales), imagine the generation of interest and maintaining of momentum. Imagine the game in Wales being future proofed by enthusing the younger generation. For the Union, it may help feed a wider interest in the national team. Rugby over pints, press releases and infighting. Imagine.
In these days of central control it is imperative the club explores every avenue and angle to maximise promise, value and attractiveness to gain freedom from the shackles of a zip wired Union. Let us be frank, a tapas of kick off times doth butter no parsnips. As the philosopher may have had it, liberty is only possible on the condition of regularity. We can but hope that someone, somewhere in the myopic, tone deaf corridors of URC HQ realises that URC may also stand for Understanding Rugby's Culture.
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