Dragi rugbysti,
ko se kaksen dan dopoldne sprasujete, kaj naredim za rugby cez dan, vam prilagam eno svojih domislic, kako izboljsati prepoznavnost tega sporta pri nas in tudi drugje po vzhodu.Enkrat lani. Za cistune, nimam ga v slovenscini, ker sem ga jezen zapisal kar "tacga"
Dear Mr. Carrigy,
One of the decisions taken at the FIRA-AER assembly in Odense has been to increase the number of rugby players in Europe from 1 mio to 1.2 mio players, a 20% increase.
From the point of view of a country where rugby is not a tradition or a legacy, but an anonymous sport that most people cannot distinguish from American football (which they also only see in film) such an increase is, of course, an unattainable goal.
Our country, Slovenia, is a good case in point. Let me illustrate this with the following: we have 4 sports TVs and 2 occasional TV channels that only broadcast soccer matches. The daily programs of the 4 sports TV stations consists in general of 20 hours of soccer, followed by some basketball, ice hockey, American football, even baseball, and then occasionally such sports as darts, underwater hockey etc. Only one TV station broadcasts the Six Nations Cup and the Heineken Cup, and this due to the fact that the station owner is a personal acquaintance of mine. There is also a Total TV that apparently does broadcast some rugby, but only announces its program online – not very handy for the average viewer.
Such poor coverage adds to the problems we are all experiencing with promoting rugby not only in Slovenia but also in the other former Yugoslavian republics (that a total population of 25 mio people, just to give you an idea), and in Hungary, Bulgaria, Albania, possibly also in Austria.
This has set me thinking and I arrived at an idea I will present to you here, even if for no other reason than to never reproach myself that I haven’t at least tried.
The idea is as follows: A TV center for distributing picture and tone would be set up in Slovenia, for a single subject: rugby 24/7, all year round. The picture part of the contents would then be distributed to individual countries, where regional center would then provide their own, native commentators to follow the matches and provide the related information – where rugby in played in the individual country, the names of the clubs, the location of the pitches, the dates of the matches, etc. Local center could also broadcast matches of their national sides live and also record them, while the main center would broadcast the match later – this mainly due to the fact that there are several matches on the same day at the same time. With such constant rugby coverage we could make it a more familiar and attractive sport also in our part of the continent.
I have also drawn up an estimate for setting up a Rzgby TV network and its branches. The financing should come from IRB and FIRA-AER with the aid of sponsors; there are no sponsors left in Slovenia, as the country is about to go bankrupt. My advertising agency could provide the premises for the TV network and experiences staff. We could cover Slovenia, Austria, Croatia, and Bosnia-Herzegovina. Other associates could be found among rugby enthusiasts in other countries.
I hope you find my idea interesting. I’ll be happy to provide any additional information by phone or email.
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
Jos Zalokar