Who’s to blame for falling Super 14 crowds?

 
Andrew Logan Columnist

By , 12 Mar 2010 Andrew Logan is a Roar Expert

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The Waratahs Berrick Barnes kicks the ball against the Sharks during their Super 14 rugby match in Sydney on Saturday, March 7, 2010. The Waratahs defeated the Sharks 25-21. AAP Image/Paul Miller.

Carlos Spencer said it, and I believe it. Super 14 crowds are nothing compared to what they used to be.

Once upon a time, the Super 14 was one of the hottest tickets in town, particularly in Sydney which is its biggest Australian market. But crowds in the Super 14 are falling away, to the point where the Waratahs are expecting a paltry turnout of about 10,000 for their match against the Lions tomorrow night.

I’m sorry. 10,000? On a Friday night after work? Jeez, it’s not like you have to go to church the next day.

How unbelievable is it that in the biggest rugby market in the country, we can’t even half fill the Sydney Football Stadium for a South African touring side playing our boys from the Waratahs. It’s not like we’ve got another team to compete against, unlike the NRL who muster similar figures (give or take a few thousand) for each of four or five Sydney matches each weekend. The Waratahs only have seven home games a year, for Christ’s sake.

It’s a totally unacceptable result, and heads must roll. For too long the culprits have been allowed to hob-nob in their ivory towers – criticising players, coaches and referees and calling for law changes. They’ve embraced players one minute while their form was good, and then plunged the knife into their backs the next.

They’ve been the first to divert the attention from anything they might be able to do for the game instead preferring to place the blame at the doorstep of the mythical “Them” and “They”. Blessed with the cloak of invisibility when it comes to having to defend their views, they revel in the luxury of saying whatever they like, about whomever they like, whenever they like, knowing that they’ll rarely be called to task, and hardly ever sanctioned officially.

The unfortunate thing about this shadowy cartel is that many of them enjoyed the game in their youth. They were happy to take from rugby when it could provide them with something, but now that the time has come for them to fight for its future, they choose to do nothing.

By now you’ve worked out who I’m talking about, and it’s not the ARU, or any of the state unions, or the IRB, or the referees.

It’s the fans. Yeah, that’s right. You guys.

I can now hear the clatter of pitchforks and the whuff of torches being lit as the peasants prepare to storm The Roar castle and lynch the heretic, but I’m ready to go. If the door breaks down and I’m dragged away in the next few sentences by a rabid mob, I’ll die happy, knowing that at least I wasn’t one of you faceless couch-sitters. After all, everyone knows that all it takes for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing.

“How dare you talk to me like that?” I hear you say, but since we’re talking (albeit while you’re sharpening that castrating knife and Googling my home address), have a think about the last time you heard anyone say anything really positive about rugby?

What about you? I bet what you actually heard or said was a critique of the rules, the play, the players and their pay, all backed up with the catch-all disengagement….”I don’t bother to go anymore”…as if to say “That’ll show ‘em”.

The problem is, you’re not showing anyone anything, except that rugby people have morphed into a sorry group of home-dwelling, flat-screen watching, IQ-button-tickling, remote critics.

What those critics mostly don’t realise is that you have to earn the right to criticise.

You can earn it in several different ways. Great ex-players earn it by spilling blood on the paddock. Writers try to earn it by building a body of insightful work and putting their head on the public chopping block once or twice a week.

Certain fans also earn the right to criticise by being there through the easy going, and the tough times at altitude. They’re the ones who stick by their team through torrential rain, and early-season heatwaves. They’re always there for the curtain raiser, and they stay for that extra drink after the game is over. They go down to the fence to clap the boys off, even when the game hasn’t been that great.

Unfortunately for most of us, we think we earned the right to criticise by paying our Foxtel subscription on time.

In case you missed it, rugby has got a war on its hands. But unlike rugby league, which is fighting for a big chunk of market share, and AFL which is fighting for new markets, we’re fighting for our very existence.

And like most wars, it comes down to money. Walk into any group of rugby people at any pub anywhere in the country and you hear the same tired old refrain “The (insert union here) should be doing more to develop the game” as though the unions are all out to lunch pissing it up, while the rest of us are running coaching clinics in the rain somewhere with two torn tacklebags and a flat ball. Yeah, right.

What the self-righteous do-nothings prefer not to get is that by opting out and waiting for rugby to somehow fix itself, they play a very active part in reducing the money that filters down to the grassroots.

To give you an idea of the numbers, in 2008, the AFL distributed $188 million to its clubs and associated entities. The NRL distributed $53.6 million. The ARU, by contrast, gave out around $8 million – just 4% of the AFL number.

If the sports were schoolkids, AFL would be arriving on the oval in a chopper, while the ARU hopped off the bus with cardboard over the holes in its shoes.

Whatever your opinion of the ARU, you certainly can’t argue that they’re rolling in dough and holding it back from the rest of us.

In the classic movie Other People’s Money, Larry The Liquidator said “We’re dead alright. We’re just not broke. And you know the surest way to go broke? Keep getting an increasing share of a shrinking market. Down the tubes. Slow but sure”.

In rugby terms, the shrinking market he’s talking about is us. The fans. We’ve stopped going to games. We’ve stopped taking part. And according to the ratings figures, many of us have stopped watching on TV too.

Which means that the three richest sources of revenue the game has, all cop a hit. Gate receipts and sponsorship head south when we don’t go to the games, and pay TV receipts too will eventually go south if we don’t watch.

“So what?” I hear you say. “Why should I waste my money on going to the game when the rugby is rubbish? Why should I support the ARU when they do nothing to get my kid interested in the game?”.

My answer? Because by going to the game, you earn the right to have a real voice. By supporting the players, you remember what is really important in rugby – and that’s hanging in through the dark days as well as the salad days when we’re on top.

By being involved you earn the right to call yourself a genuine rugby supporter, and you earn the right to pass this birthright and tradition on to your kids.

You wouldn’t wait for the police to drop around to your place to give you kids a quick lesson on law and order, or hope that the dentist shows up to teach them how to clean their teeth.

So why are you waiting for the ARU, or the NSWRU or someone else to teach your child the joys of rugby? Why are you waiting for someone else to fix rugby before you get up and go to a game?

Rugby needs us more now than ever before, so it’s hard to believe that we’re deserting it in droves. How in the world could a warrior like Phil Waugh, who has spilt more blood than an abbatoir slaughterman and taken more hits than Evel Knievel, all for our enjoyment, be looking down the barrel of a record number of appearances for the Waratahs in front of a quarter full stadium?

We should be utterly ashamed of ourselves. Not for Waugh’s sake, but because we now care so little about taking part in the important moments in rugby.

It’s about time we woke up and got off the couch and went to the game. Those crowd numbers and gate receipts will eventually trickle back down to your little area of grassroots rugby, in the form of distributions to clubs, coaching support and other development activities. And even if they don’t amount to much, who cares. You’ve reconnected and become part of the family again.

Sure the unions are dysfunctional in some ways. But if that’s your opinion, doesn’t that make it even more ridiculous to be leaving the future of the game in their hands? Get involved yourself.

What to do? Well, I can hear the baying of a torch-bearing mob on the wind as they surge up the windy mountain path to my hideout, so I won’t go through the full million or so ways that you could support rugby.

The easiest one would be to walk out of your office tomorrow evening, grab a kid and/or a few mates, and head out to the SFS to cheer on the Waratahs and their record-breaking captain. As rugby people, it’s incumbent upon us to take the future of the game in our hands, earn the right to criticise, and most important of all, pat one of our own on the back.

Keep an eye out for me and I’ll buy you a beer. I’ll be easy to spot – there’ll be a pitchfork between my shoulder-blades.

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