No rugby in media poor reflection on the game
Roar Guru By Bay35Pablo, 2 Jul 2010 Bay35Pablo is a Roar Guru
- Tagged:
- Rugby Union, shute shield, Super 15, Sydney Morning Herald, Tri Nations, wallabies, Waratahs
Australian rugby union player Will Genia at Wallabies training. AAP Image/Paul Miller
I pulled open the Sydney Morning Herald (sponsor of the NSW Waratahs, and thus presumably Sydney’s rugby paper, as opposed to the league aligned News Limited tabloid) on Thursday, to find not one article on rugby.
Well, one snippet in “the Inside Back” with various gossip and tidbits about various sports – being Dean Young saying Mark Gasnier will take some time to adapt to league again as “he probably hasn’t tackled anyone or played a tough game of footy in 18 months”.
Top one Dean. Two words – Lote Tuqiri.
Anyway, back to the point. No rugby news.
Well, I thought to myself, the Wallabies are having a break before the Tri-Nations, so clearly anything else doesn’t rate in the Herald.
While the Australian can (as usual) tend be guaranteed to have an article in every day (two that day) during the season, they tend to have a more national focus given they are a national paper.
Whereas Sydney, the main heartland of the game (sorry Queensland, although you seem to be catching up) and the home of the premier club comp in Australia (being the next step down from Super rugby) could manage nothing, zip, nada, zero!
When I logged onto the Sydney Morning Herald web site, what do I find?
Two articles published at 2.06pm the previous day – “Staniforth to stay with Force” and “Lachie Turner called up to Australian sevens squad”. Which I would regard as newsworthy, and the Australian did with the latter making up part of an article on the Sevens team.
Clearly too stale for the SMH sports editor (God bless his cotton socks for bagging the AFL the other day, but now back in my bad books) with them only to be seen on the web site.
This caused me to think back to the Sunday Herald from the previous weekend, when there had been two full pages for rugby (not bad). However, two thirds of it was written by Greg “Grouchy” Growden. I had visions of a clone army of Greg’s writing articles, multiplicity style.
Perhaps Greg had a break on Thursday, thus bringing the Sydney rugby news machine to a halt?
Of course, the other third of the Sun Herald that day was written by Rupert Guinness. However, Rupert, with no disrespect, is a bit of a sports tart. He’ll shortly be off to report on his mate Lance in the Tour de France, so we can’t expect to see any rugby articles from him soon, or him filling in if Greg is at home sick in the pj’s with a cup of soup.
The fact that the Herald only started reporting on the Shute Shield in recent weeks when the Super rugby players starting coming back shows how fickle the Herald, and the media in general, has become.
While league is a media machine, with countless writers churning out column inches in Sydney papers, and the same for the AFL in Melbourne (and Adelaide and Perth I presume), rugby (and arguably football to a lesser degree) seem to limp along with the print media equivalent of a skeleton crew.
When the best analysis of rugby in Australia after the Australian seems to come from a free podcast run for love (the boys at Ruggamatrix) plus, of course, on the Roar, and the most consistent news on Sydney club rugby comes from the same source, there’s a worry.
In TV land rugby is served by Seven (shudder) and Foxtel (double shudder), while football is carried by the incomparable SBS (ignoring Craig Foster foaming at the mouth) and Foxtel with coverage that makes the rugby product look pale by comparison.
The fact is, sports is an entertainment industry now, so the level of sponsorship and revenue comes from how much attention you are getting. If rugby is not getting much news out there, it isn’t getting exposure, and its “stock” is slipping. Much like football with the Socceroos and the World Cup, it seems without the Wallabies doing well, rugby slips into some shadow world of the media.
I have previously on the Roar castigated John O’Neill’s comments last year about the new Super 15 ensuring that there will be rugby from February to November, with the Super 15, in bound tours, the Tri-Nations and then outbound tour. As I said at the time, when the Super 15 isn’t on that will be one Wallabies game every week at best, and at times only every few weeks. Hardly wall to wall coverage and product like the league and AFL (or even football).
If rugby can’t make the news when the Super 15 teams and Wallabies aren’t playing, then we have to look at what we are doing as a sport. While New Zealand and South Africa slip easily into the New Zealand Cup and Currie Cup respectively, Australia seems to suddenly be riding through a desert on a horse with no name.
John O’Neill’s long season of rugby looks pretty anemic, and the amount of coverage the media gives it will be the proof in the end.
Hopefully my opening the paper that day isn’t a vision of the future for rugby in the news in Australia.
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- Explore:
- Rugby Union, shute shield, Super 15, Sydney Morning Herald, Tri Nations, wallabies, Waratahs
July 2nd 2010 @ 2:26am
counterruck said | July 2nd 2010 @ 2:26am | Report comment
for a so called broadsheet the SMH rugby coverage frankly leaves a lot to be desired. greg growden is probably a nice guy but his reporting is all rumors, inuendo and bufoonery, and like the foxtel commentators he often seems embarrassed or as if he wishes he was watching something else. whatever the state of the game you would never get that with direhard journo’s covering other codes.
in the media’s defence obviously the reader interest is just not out there. that boils down to poor administrative choices. having a whole structure dependant on the wallabies is never going to work and i think people are finding it hard to get excited when there are 16 tests a year.
July 2nd 2010 @ 4:22am
RugbyFan said | July 2nd 2010 @ 4:22am | Report comment
I find it frustrating that the Rugby coverage just isn’t there in Australia. I am an Aussie and a huge Aussie rugby fan living in the UK and compared to the coverage that is in the UK, South Africa and NZ we have nothing!!! Just look at the fact that there is no decent Aussie iPhone app!!! I have to get live coverage of super games on my iPhone from a South African sports app… That is just wrong!!! Come on Aussies there are sooooo many out there who love the game but just aren’t speaking up…
July 2nd 2010 @ 6:36am
Fuchal said | July 2nd 2010 @ 6:36am | Report comment
Well, it could be worse. They could have treated it as a slow news day and just made a bunch of “rumours” up, thrown in a “source close to the team” and fabricated a melodrama which doesn’t exist. It’s what most journalists (sport or otherwise) do and what Greg Growden is known for.
D
July 2nd 2010 @ 7:48am
Mr Saunders said | July 2nd 2010 @ 7:48am | Report comment
Rugby is still a minority sport and the media coverage reflects this. It’s virtually impossible to find the starting line-ups for the France v Argentina A game from the 18/06/2010.
From an English perspective I can’t stand the quality of coverage. The general analysis is embarassing, and people like Stephen Jones, Peter Bills and Stuart Barnes are an embarassment to the game.
Incidentally, French rugby coverage, IMO, of rugby is far superior to anything else in Europe.
July 2nd 2010 @ 8:28am
counterruck said | July 2nd 2010 @ 8:28am | Report comment
“Incidentally, French rugby coverage, IMO, of rugby is far superior to anything else in Europe.”
It would definitely be interesting to read the french perspective on things. My french is only high school level but there is always google translate.
It raises a broader point that france is probably rugby’s biggest economy and yet it seems to me that they dont participate hugely in any of the debates surrounding the game
July 2nd 2010 @ 8:04am
Redb said | July 2nd 2010 @ 8:04am | Report comment
“Clearly too stale for the SMH sports editor (God bless his cotton socks for bagging the AFL the other day, but now back in my bad books) with them only to be seen on the web site.”
Disappointing you bless another sport being bagged and ignored by a sports editor.
So on one hand you bemoan rugby’s poor treatment/influence/disinterest in the media and the next you applaud the same approach to another sport. Karma methinks.
The iphone version of both the AGE and SMH currently features a block of World Cup articles. Now have a guess which one has puts the ‘local’ code in front of the biggest sporting event in the world at the moment?
July 2nd 2010 @ 8:39am
Bay35Pablo said | July 2nd 2010 @ 8:39am | Report comment
Redb, sensitive!!!
I agreed with the editor in that article in a tongue in cheek, argument over beers way. One of the reasons I love rugby is it is an international game. AFL is not. However, please feel free to riposte to his point in that regard.
It doesn’t mean I am here to bash AFL.
The AFL is very good in how it controls the media and its product. If rugby got a fraction of the coverage and level of anlysis AFL does, I’d be a happy chappy.
July 2nd 2010 @ 9:31am
Redb said | July 2nd 2010 @ 9:31am | Report comment
Hmm… was only joking, tongue in cheek , now you reckon
July 2nd 2010 @ 8:31am
Blinky Bill of Bellingen said | July 2nd 2010 @ 8:31am | Report comment
You think Rugby gets no media attention, try finding anything much on darts.
July 4th 2010 @ 9:06am
Joh4Canberra said | July 4th 2010 @ 9:06am | Report comment
LOL!
July 2nd 2010 @ 8:50am
Gatesy said | July 2nd 2010 @ 8:50am | Report comment
I don’t think quantity is a problem – more the quality.
The RL “machine” as the author calls, it, turns out a huge amount of stuff every day but it is targeted at a market that only reads the back part of the populist newspaper and which needs grist for its water cooler or pub conversations.
I sat in the crowd at Suncorp for the recent NRL double-header. Apart from the fact that I am not a follower of the game these days, as I consider it far too one-dimensional, the experience of sitting among a mixed crowd of Titans, Broncos, Bulldogs and Panthers fans was interesting, particularly during the second game when the fans of the teams in the first game got drunker and drunker. The general tenor of the barracking was at about the level of a 10 year old’ intellect, and I’m not just talking about the young guys in the crowd. Happily there were plenty of coppers in attendance as some fo the fans around us were getting pretty ugly in their behaviour, late in the evening.
It was actually a relief to get into a pub in Caxton Street and watch some World Cup Soccer on TV.
My point is that that is the sort of target market that News Limited is aimed at – quantity not quality.
My first port of call each day is this website, then ABC Grandstand, then Rugby Heaven. By that time, all of the other websites are just re-hashing what everyone else is, so the quality is pretty poor.
We have had this conversation before on this site. I believe that an inventive or inquisitive journo who covered sport in the larger cities of Australia, should be able to get out and about and find good stories, write human interest pieces, dig up genuine dirt, etc etc, not just do what is being done at present – which I assume is largely based on waiting for press releases or snippets of gossip from ARU HQ.
“Around the Grounds” means around all the grounds, not just the SCG or Moore Park.
If we want the Sydney and Brisbane (and hopefully Melbourne) club comps to become strong and interesting, we need everyone to be a part of creating the interest – not just the players and the clubs, but the press, TV, and the Unions.
WE need to work on the principle of “if you build it they will come ‘ but it seems that we always fall back on that other principle ..”if you do what you’ve always done, you’ll get what you’ve always got!” (and which is probably what we deserve – so Roarers ….keep roaring!)
July 4th 2010 @ 8:41am
Bay35Pablo said | July 4th 2010 @ 8:41am | Report comment
“inventive or inquisitive journo who covered sport in the larger cities of Australia”
Um, so no one? Or if they are, their editor will soon end that.
July 2nd 2010 @ 9:06am
Brett McKay said | July 2nd 2010 @ 9:06am | Report comment
The scribes porbably aren’t helped by the Wallabies having a week or so off currently, too, but still that shouldn’t excuse them from not covering club rugby around the country. Even RugbyHeaven NZ is in a bit of a lull currently, but they still at least have opinion pieces being churned out, as well as news on the CBA negotiations, and the standard Sonny Bill Williams update.
But yes, you do have to wonder why if Wayne Smith at The Oz can still turn out something everyday, why Greg Growden can’t do the same.
Anyway, on more pressing matters today, from Mr Growden, in fact:
Who is the well-known rugby scribe, running late for a press conference, rushed in, and thrust in the face of a player what he thought was his tape recorder? After about 10 seconds, the journo realised it was a packet of Tic Tacs.
Now I’m not “well-known” enough (I doubt I even qualify as “little-known”) for this to be me, but I’m sure with enough pressure from Roarers, Loges or Spiro will eventually come clean…..
July 2nd 2010 @ 9:26am
counterruck said | July 2nd 2010 @ 9:26am | Report comment
hahah. how many well known rugby scribes are there?
July 2nd 2010 @ 1:54pm
Brett McKay said | July 2nd 2010 @ 1:54pm | Report comment
only two on The Roar!!
July 2nd 2010 @ 10:11am
ncart said | July 2nd 2010 @ 10:11am | Report comment
Partly this is a reflection on the ARU/NSWRU and the Sydney clubs not getting any newsworthy info out to the media. Are the Shute Shield clubs actively providing press releases/updates to the SMH? They can’t just sit back and ‘expect’ to get media coverage, they need to seek it out, just like seeking out players to come and play for them, and supporters to come and watch – you have to market yourself to the audience that you want and I don’t think that this is happening. Perhaps I’m wrong and someone associated with the Shute Shield clubs can advise what they are doing.
It is also a reflection on the fact that NSW has 10 or so NRL teams so clearly there is something to cover amongst them, but with only one team (Waratahs) in NSW and they are finished for the season, then the Wallabies on a break for a month (very surprised if the ARU are happy with a Tri Nations draw that has no rugby in Australia for a month). This is where the local Premier clubs should be pushing their barrow to get their profile higher and perhaps it needs the Premier competition to pool resources and designate a resource to promote their activities to the various media and thus get more publicity which in turn leads to bigger audiences etc.