To be quite honest I've seen much better games down at Saltend. Not trying to knock these lads they study more than they train, they are playing for their Uni and I think play 3 varsity games a year if not more but only one is televised. I get what Sky are trying to do to spread the sport into the Uni's but both Oxford and Cambridge are massive and couldnt even get a half decent crowd. Maybe the game that should be televised should be a playoff game from the league that they both play in? It might not be those two teams but at least its being fair to the whole country instead of just Oxford and Cambridge! They already have the boat race the greedy so and so's!
both teams play at a very low level in student rugby (check out leeds met v loughborough at headingley next thursday - should be a cracker), and when i was at uni it used to p!$$ us off royaly that their game got shown. in a meeting with the people who run student rugby it was brought up. reason behind it is simple - they get 60k people watching the game on sky apparently just because its a varsity - a lot of people dont ever watch another RL game. in contrast, some super league games on sky only get 30k viewers... sky are only willing to pay to broadcast this game, and the sponsorship associated with it being on sky brings in money as well. that money goes towards funding the entire student game
standard of rugby doesnt ever come into it, which is a shame as student RL is full of good players (a number at superleague and NL clubs).
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