For those keeping score, that Arduino Ethernet Shield 2 is an Arduino.org product, not an Arduino.cc product. That’s all I’m going to say about politics here.
The “new” R3 arduino header arrangement is also there on the regular Arduino Ethernet Shield, so that is not a new feature of this revision of the product. Technically it is the Arduino 1.0 pinout. Commonly, and mistakenly, called the R3 pinout because it was first seen on the R3 Arduino boards.
What is new are the TinkerKit headers, and components shifted around to make room for the headers. One of the major things that moved is the reset button, but that is actually quite minor for most people. More importantly, both the SD card and the optional PoE mounting appear to be in very nearly the same place. (I’d have to compare CAD files to be sure.)
One thing that always bugged me about the PoE module is Arduino never carried it as a stand-alone part in their store. One could get an Ethernet Shield with one installed, but if one wanted to upgrade an existing shield to use PoE one had to try to figure out how to source the module themselves. Do you guys at SparkFun think you could look into stocking them? I don’t expect that it would be a high volume product, so an initial order of 10 might last you a year…