Rugby seasons just keep going, but to what end?

Irish Times

5 days ago

During a chance meeting recently with a former international rugby referee, one of his first comments about the game he officiated for many years was: 'I'm all rugby'd out.'
Whether that was from the emotional toll of watching
Leinster
badly fall away from the Champions Cup or the fact that by late May two competitions were still running, he didn't say. But his point was well made.
This 2025 rugby season has a never-ending feel to it, just as the 2024 season did.
Both Leinster and
Munster
are still involved and if they win their next two matches, the quarter-final and semi-final of the United Rugby Championship (URC), they play the Grand Final on June 14th.
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The teams kicked off the league on September 20th last year after preseason matches.
The inaugural Celtic League in the 2000-01 season began on the weekend of August 17th and was completed by December 15th when Leinster beat Munster in front of 30,000 in Lansdowne Road.
The following year the league final was in February, when Munster beat Neath in the Millennium Stadium in Cardiff.
In its third year, the first following the formation of the five regional rugby sides in Wales, it was further elongated.
Having previously been played as a pool stage followed by knockout rounds, it was re-engineered into a typical league system, based on home and away games only.
That season the league began in September and was won by the Llanelli Scarlets when they beat Ulster in the last match on May 14th.
By then the professional game was up and running and clubs needed income to pay their players.
More attractive matches and a longer season was a sure way of generating income and rugby got what it has now, a mid-June final followed by an assortment of tours involving Ireland and Lions players as well as a women's World Cup in the UK, where the Irish team will play at least three pool matches against New Zealand, Japan and Spain.
Leinster's Jordie Barrett signs autographs, a tiny part of his social load. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
Last year in July the Irish men's squad was in South Africa preparing for a Test series against the world champions more than a year after their World Cup training camp began and 11 months since they opened their warm-up World Cup campaign against Italy at the Aviva Stadium.
For Irish fullback Hugo Keenan last season was longer than any before. Having entered Ireland's training camp on June 18th, 2023, he finished playing in the 2024 Olympic Games in Paris with the now defunct Irish Sevens team on July 27th.
When the URC final is complete, if any of the 15 Irish players selected for the Lions by Andy Farrell are playing, they can look forward to quickly convening for a match against Argentina five days later in the Aviva Stadium to mark the beginning of the summer tour.
It is the first time a Lions team will play in Ireland, which should ensure that any Irish player who competes in the URC final will want to perform in front of a home crowd. Irish player involvement would also generate more local interest.
The Lions then travel to Optus Stadium in Perth in Western Australia to begin the nine-match tour through Brisbane, Sydney, Canberra, Adelaide, Brisbane again, Melbourne and Sydney. The tour will include three Test matches against Australia towards the end, with the final match against the Wallabies taking place on August 2nd in Sydney's Stadium Australia.
While that is happening, the Irish team − shorn of its Lions players − will play two summer tour matches against Georgia and Portugal under interim head coach Paul O'Connell.
First up on July 5th Ireland will play Georgia in Tblisi. The Georgians are 11th in the World Rugby rankings. A week later Ireland travel to Lisbon to face 18th-ranked Portugal.
The British and Irish Lions will play in Ireland for the first time this year. Photograph: Ben Brady/Inpho
Given the workloads you would wonder if rugby could learn from a comparable sport − American football. Through a 2025 collective bargaining agreement, the NFL announced a nine-week off season programme conducted in three phases.
The first two weeks of the programme is limited to meetings, strength and conditioning, and physical rehabilitation.
The second phase, which is three weeks long, involves on-field workouts that may include individual or group instruction and drills.
Phase three is a four-week bloc in which teams may conduct a total of 10 days of live practice, where no contact is permitted.
The regular season begins on the weekend following the first Monday of September and ends in early January, after which the season's playoffs begin, culminating in the Super Bowl in February.
There has been a lot said and written about long seasons posing significant challenges for rugby players, impacting their physical and cognitive performance and increasing injury risk. But exactly how long a season should be has not been precisely defined and, anyway, in Irish rugby some players have longer seasons than others.
In 2016 an International Olympic Committee scientific paper also showed that player loads are not just training and playing matches but include psychological load, travel loads, social and social media loads.
The non-physical loads are difficult to measure but are another factor in determining what is appropriate.
Come August, when this season finally ends, it may or may not have been too long. But by then it will not just be the former international referee who will be all 'rugby'd out'.