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Roy Morgan's rugby participation numbers are fake news

27th March, 2017
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The ARU need a plan that doesn't only involve prayer. (AAP Image/Tracey Nearmy)
Expert
27th March, 2017
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A worrying story landed in my inbox late last week, pointing to the imminent death of Australian rugby. And not just at the professional level.

The game, according to an article, is on its’ death bed at all levels nationally.

Under the headline, ‘Soccer roars, rugby is disappearing’, Business Insider Australia ran a piece based around some Roy Morgan Research analysis, which made a seriously concerning point about rugby participation numbers in Australia.

Citing a 2016 participation figure of 55,000 men, women, and children (extrapolated from responses from 14,330 people sampled), the BIA piece concluded that “rugby participation has fallen an enormous 63 per cent from 148,000 in 2001.”

The overall figure of 55,000 is alarming, no doubt. But it didn’t feel right when I read it, and after a number of conversations over the weekend, it feels even less right.

Come Sunday, and I was again in commentary for a Super U20s Championship match, with the competition-leading Queensland Reds U20s in Canberra taking on the Brumbies Colts. The young Reds won fairly comfortably, and will host the Final against the NSW Gen Blue side this Sunday at Ballymore at 2pm. If you’re in the neighbourhood, I’d highly recommend checking the final out – there will be some serious talent on show.

But it also gave me the chance to talk to a rugby friend down from Brisbane to watch his young bloke. Curious, I asked if he’d seen the article, to which he immediately laughed at my mention of ‘Roy Morgan Research’. “Makes you wonder who commissioned the research, doesn’t it?” he shot back.

Regardless of what may well be a very valid point, he held similar suspicion about the numbers, suggesting that there would probably be ‘half that number of girls playing in Queensland alone’. It was enough to plant a seed.

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A couple of follow-up calls only confirmed both our suspicions. A source close enough to the development pathways in Queensland that they’ve seen the soon-to-be-released participation numbers for 2016 indicated that my mate was right.

Where Queensland boasted around 21,000 female participants across all formats in 2015, this number is set to jump to more than 33,000 in 2016, my source told me. That number would include all club players, all Sevens and modified format players. And it’s worth remembering that half of the Australian Pearls, the Rio Olympic gold medallists, came from Queensland.

It’s not unreasonable to think that number will increase again in 2017.

But if the Roy Morgan Research is to be believed, as BIA would like you to, apparently there are only 18,000 other rugby players Australia-wide. That is, all males in Queensland, and all players in total in NSW, the ACT, Victoria, and Western Australia. And everywhere else in between. Eighteen thousand.

Charlotte Caslick of Australia

Now, even just some rudimentary maths tells me there is no way 55,000 can be right.

Premier Grade rugby in Sydney comprises four senior grades and three colts competitions, played by twelve clubs. That’s upwards of 2,000 players. The Sydney sub-district competition speaks of more than 50 clubs and somewhere near 6,000 players, with claims on being the biggest rugby competition in the world.

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Brisbane’s Premier Grade competition requires more than 1200 players across nine clubs fielding four senior and two colts grades. ‘Subbies’ lifts that number again.

In the ACT, there’s upwards of 500 players across seven clubs, and two senior grades plus colts. Two further lower grades effectively act as ‘Subbies’, and include smaller clubs. In Melbourne, the number is more than a thousand, with nine clubs and five grades, and it’s more than 1100 in Perth, with ten clubs playing four senior grades plus colts.

That’s the best part of 12,000 of the remaining 18,000 players just there. And I haven’t counted juniors, women’s Sevens or XVs competitions outside Queensland, or any rugby played anywhere outside the five Super Rugby cities.

The ARU’s figures for 2016 are due in the next few weeks, but they reported a total of 267,463 regular participants in 2015, with more than 700,000 Australians having “rugby experiences” last year.

Even if you didn’t want to look at numbers coming from the game itself, the Australian Sports Commission in December last year pointed to rugby participation numbers of 199,000 people. The ASC analysis tallied 56,000 boys alone.

Therefore, there’s no way the Roy Morgan Research numbers pass the sniff test.

But with the cone of silence from the ARU firmly locked down, this kind of wildly skewed analysis goes unchallenged, and it’s not right. At a time when the game has never needed its national body more, rugby people – and people in general – will see hugely doubtful figures and headlines like this bandied around and decide for themselves that it must be true.

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There are plenty of things going wrong with rugby in Australia at the moment, and none of what I’ve pointed out here shies away from this.

But now, it seems, Australian rugby has ‘alternative facts’ to contend with.

Quick update: The ARU has released a statement on the Roy Morgan research, rejecting the findings of the survey.

“The Roy Morgan numbers are not supported by any other research and are strongly rejected by the ARU,” said Andrew Larratt, the ARU’s general manager of community rugby and strategy.

You can find the full statement here.

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