{"id":73089,"date":"2014-09-18T23:13:38","date_gmt":"2014-09-18T22:13:38","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/?p=73089"},"modified":"2014-09-18T23:13:38","modified_gmt":"2014-09-18T22:13:38","slug":"tony-ward-devalue-clubs-pro-game-slippery-slope","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/tony-ward-devalue-clubs-pro-game-slippery-slope\/","title":{"rendered":"Tony Ward: Devalue the clubs and pro game is on a slippery slope"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Last night in Limerick and Dublin, the Ulster Bank All Ireland League kicked into gear. It is a much earlier start than times past, but I have no issue with that.<\/p>\n<p>Some may feel it is squeezing players tight in terms of pre-season preparation, but when I played, the start of the season couldn&#8217;t come quickly enough, and I suspect the vast majority of club players out there still think upon similar lines.<\/p>\n<p>Add in the fact that in general September offers good firm playing conditions, and an early start is an easy sell.<\/p>\n<p>Looking ahead at the fixtures, the one glaring inadequacy comes in October, when effectively a full month is written off, I assume for the opening rounds of the B&#038;I Cup, a competition for the provinces&#8217; peripheral players.<br \/>\n&#8211; See more at: <a href=\"http:\/\/www.independent.ie\/sport\/rugby\/other-rugby\/tony-ward-devalue-the-clubs-and-pro-game-is-on-a-slippery-slope-30583669.html#sthash.pdv0suoi.dpuf\">http:\/\/www.independent.ie\/sport\/rugby\/other-rugby\/tony-ward-devalue-the-clubs-and-pro-game-is-on-a-slippery-slope-30583669.html#sthash.pdv0suoi.dpuf<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Last night in Limerick and Dublin, the Ulster Bank All Ireland League kicked into gear. It is a much earlier start than times past, but I have no issue with that. Some may feel it is squeezing players tight in terms of pre-season preparation, but when I played, the start of the season couldn&#8217;t come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[17189,14956,5848,6579,5743,8756,7750],"class_list":["post-73089","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-clubs","tag-clubs","tag-devalue","tag-game","tag-pro","tag-the","tag-tony","tag-ward"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73089","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=73089"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73089\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":73243,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/73089\/revisions\/73243"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=73089"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=73089"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=73089"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}