{"id":77020,"date":"2014-11-26T18:58:35","date_gmt":"2014-11-26T18:58:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/?p=77020"},"modified":"2020-10-24T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2020-10-24T12:06:31","slug":"simon-hick-column-rugby-needs-change-reflect-sports-broadening-fan-base","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/simon-hick-column-rugby-needs-change-reflect-sports-broadening-fan-base\/","title":{"rendered":"Simon Hick column: Rugby needs to change to reflect the sport\u2019s broadening fan base"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Donall Farmer\/INPHO see more at :- <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/Inphosports\">https:\/\/twitter.com\/Inphosports<\/a><\/p>\n<p>THE BIG DIFFERENCE between northern and southern hemisphere rugby isn\u2019t so much what\u2019s seen on the field of play, but more the appetite for broadening the game\u2019s appeal.<br \/>\nStephen Ferris was on RTE\u2019s Against The Head on Monday night and it came up that he hadn\u2019t come from a traditional rugby school, having paved his way to international and Lions stardom along the less familiar path of junior rugby.<br \/>\nFerris humbly pointed out that he wasn\u2019t the only one to do this, with Sean O\u2019Brien and Shane Horgan both taking the same route. There\u2019s a few others who successfully by-passed the schools system such as John Hayes and Alan Quinlan, but overall its a shockingly short list.<br \/>\nThe fan base in Ireland may have broadened somewhat in recent years, but at underage representative level not a lot has changed. It\u2019s instructive to look at, for example, the Ireland under 19 squad named before the France game earlier this year&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;&#8230;. see more at :- http:\/\/www.thescore.ie\/simon-hick-rugby-4-1779514-Nov2014\/<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Image: Donall Farmer\/INPHO see more at :- https:\/\/twitter.com\/Inphosports THE BIG DIFFERENCE between northern and southern hemisphere rugby isn\u2019t so much what\u2019s seen on the field of play, but more the appetite for broadening the game\u2019s appeal. Stephen Ferris was on RTE\u2019s Against The Head on Monday night and it came up that he hadn\u2019t 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":[3],"tags":[6539,15490,15489,8730,3959,5686,5745],"class_list":["post-77020","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ulster-rugby","tag-change","tag-column","tag-hick","tag-needs","tag-rugby","tag-simon","tag-to"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77020","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=77020"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77020\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":633124,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/77020\/revisions\/633124"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=77020"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=77020"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.intouchrugby.com\/magazine\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=77020"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}