Rugby is a dying game in Australia

The problem is junior participation coupled with those juniors going onwards to senior. Union in Australia draws from about twenty or thirty upper crust private schools for juniors. These schools are linked to club juniors. Don't go to these schools, they are not interested in you or your kid. That isn't the case in NZ, where union draws from all backgrounds and socio economic classes. This is where the majority of good sports performers come from. Until that changes in Australia, union will continue to fail.

What a load of much ado about nothing. Look at how rugby league had to break away from the Union in England a century ago. It was clear which of the two was going to be the honourable code and therefore the one deserving of populariy and a future. Union is becoming irrelevant because it can't cope with the reality that has made league, AFL and soccer successful codes. How could union possibly survive in a country that has AFL and NRL? Just read the commentary on this board and you'll see why it has no future. RIP rugby union, and good riddance.

And yet NRL has so many Polynesians playing its not funny.. But yet in tonga, fiji and samoa...... League is overshadowed by rugby.. :lol:

As for Rugby league getting Bigger crowds :lol:... Bro work out the averages... How many matches does the NRL play? 201.. with 16541 avg or something... How many does the Super have.... 94.. .with 20'901 avg... So if the super 14 player 201 matches that would = 4'201'101..

So.. Rugby league has the TV ratings.. In Australia only.. But International Rugby still draws more crowds then Rugby league international matches.. Thanks for clearing that up.

"largest crowd ever to attend any club rugby League in UK – 1959 Challenge Cup Halifax v Warrington Odsal Stadium Bradford- 120,000" In reality it was in1954 with the OFFICIAL recorded attendance of 102,569. Please dont blow things out of proportion. What is the OFFICIAL record for a Rugby Crowd, for both codes? "The ‘Greatest ever Rugby Match’ in 2000, before a world record crowd of 109,874, when a Jonah Lomu try sealed an All Blacks win over the Wallabies 39-35. The All Blacks had led 24-nil after 11 minutes only to see Australia draw level at 24 all by half time." That is OFFICIAL... Not based on pictures and then saying.. It could be 120'000

This is the 2nd time you have misspelled 'unfortunately'..... Its not unfortuneatley. Cheers.. Thats all i had to say on this rather repetitive topic.

A lot of hyperbole but also a lot of good points made on this thread. Dynamite Dan has it nailed on with his points- I agree with all of them, except that "league was dead and buried" in 2003. It wasn't- in fact Rugby League was undergoing a boom in 2003-05, that after a wave of bad publicity in the previous few years (the axing of Souths and Norths, Hopoate, the Bulldogs busting the cap). League is a resilient sport, it is a cockroach- the sport will never die. It thrives on controversy. What Rugby League is, however, somewhat delusional of its real status on the national and global sporting landscape, at least from an Australian POV. Certainly the Super League war was the result of the game getting ideas above their station, but also the games admin before and since made colossal mistakes (e.g. shafting Perth). Rugby League in England is acutely aware of its niche status, yet it has always been a part of the working-class northern communities. Yes, the 90s and early 2000s were a Golden Age for Australian Rugby, but the ARU were lazy and squandered so much. Especially the obsession with recruiting League converts. Many including myself thought it misguided but higher-ups ignored all the signs. Basically this left Australian Rugby with the challenge of replacing a Golden Generation, which it has manifestly failed to do. But a few points about Rugby Union- - Rugby Union differs from other football codes in that historically its primary focus and drawing power was at international level and not at club level. In England, a national league didn't come until much later, for instance. France has a very long-established club competition. In the Southern Hemisphere, provincial representative teams have been the lifeblood of the game below international level. - because of this, the popularity of the game rises and falls with the fortunes of national teams. Yet there is still a clear gap between competitive and non-competitive nations. And what effort has been made to bring "lesser" teams up to scratch? - Rugby Union may have been de jure professional since 1995, but in many parts of the world it had been de facto professional for years before that. There are those who feel that Union's embrace of full professionalism has hurt the game.

As Oscar Wilde said "The only thing worse than being talked about, is not being talked about ..."

Michel, try a fullstop after rubbish, then lead a new sentence with a capital. Good man !

i think James D is having a brain explosion...relax man you are telling a lot of rubbish things maybe you need a little rest.

Speaking from the N.Hemissfhere I would be greatful if Aus Rugby would be swallowed up by its Leaguie compatriates. Leaving a few Sydney clubs and a couple of Queenslanders to make up a plucky amature Wallaby selection . Upstarts!!

So we have cricket and rugby on it's knees. Well the AFL got it's worst semi final attendance since 1934 on Saturday night. In the NRL they had finals played in front of less than 20k in some matches. Cricket's Ashes will be pretty much sold out over the summer and they had a sell out at Homebush for the Bledisloe Cup on Saturday night. It is very subjective.

on what basis do you select your ranking there, Bruski? National sides (based on TV viewerships) it is something like: 1: Socceroos 2: Wallabies 3: Kangaroos 4: All Australian selection on domestic game-day crowds something like 1: AFL 2: NRL 3: A-League 4: union Registered participation rates is (again, off the top of my head) 1: Football 2: Aussie Rules 3: League 4: Union

I agree with JVGO. James D - you are talking out of your backside mate. Your simplistic attempt to claim RL is more popular just because it's players/administrators get up to no good off the field and therefore command column inches as a result, is actually quite pathetic. A Super 15 player just bashed a police officer to death in SA.....gee I wonder if the Currie Cup viewing figures have shot through the roof in popularity since then!? What evidence do you have that off field indiscretions can be linked with a sports popularity on the field?? I can also think of loads of issues where senior Australian rugby players have made the papers over recent years for off field issues (not all criminal I admit): *Matt Dunning /Lote Tuqiri/Wendel Sailor brawling in SA nightclubs *Matt Henjak also involved in SA nightclub incident (paying off victim - so charges were dropped), then he broke Hage Saires jaw in a later drunken brawl. Subsequently leaves Australia. *Matt Dunning/Tuiavii nightclub incident with student on their mad monday celebrations *Richard Brown and Scott Fava drunken disorderly behaviour - mistreating quokkas. *Lote Tuqiri/Dunning again causing disturbances at 5.30am while drunk in hotel room, a member of their group assaults taxi driver. Tuqiri eventually axed for discplinary breaches *Kurtley Beale assault and public urination charges * James O'Connor, Quade Cooper, Valentine trash hotel room with food fight * Cooper - multiple incidents - DUI/smashing windows/stealing laptops (burglary) etcetc * I can go back even further to Kafer/Roff etc trashing taxi in SA I'm probably missing loads as well......but I fail to see how crowd figures and viewing popularity spike on the back of these incidents. I'm a hardcore Union fan, but I bought my family season tickets to our local NRL team this year, because it's a simple game that my wife and kids can both enjoy without having to ask me every 30 seconds why the referee has blown his whistle and penalised someone. Try explaining to a child and woman - that the player didn't enter the ruck through the gate.....you can imagine the responses!! Have you ever tried keeping a kid focussed when a scrum is re-packed 5 times! Then trying to explain to my wife that ELV's weren't little creatures with pointy ears, and why it's different rules/interpretations now compared to last year etc...blah blah. Does anyone remember the bore kick-fest we experienced last year with intl rugby?? So James D - take your rose tinted glasses off mate, rugby has finally got it's act together on the field this year (best 3N I've watched in years), but league can also be a great product itself.....Roosters V Tigers on sat night is a case in point and it didn't take a newspaper article about a betting scandal to make me and the family enjoy every minute of that game.

Here we go again. Rugby might be in trouble in NSW but over here in WA it is booming. Ask the NSW Rugby Union why that is the case.

you can believe what you want if you don't want to look at any objective evidence. Here's one for you, the NRL had the 2nd best year in history for average crowds, the best in history for accumulative crowds. A bad year for RL in Australia still has it streets ahead of RU, wake up.

well said...Memo to all Roar folks: when you see the words "Rugby/codes/dying/merge" - DO NOT READ - as it only encourages more stupid stories like this provocative piece of tripe....how about we stick to the stories inside our own codes?

Rusty, What makes you make a statement about something you know nothing about? I presume you look at the average Managed SF and conclude that applies to me. Far from it - I manage my own SF and investments and they are way up compared to the norm. But then, that was my vocation up to and past retirement and I would be negligent indeed if I couldn't beat the norm by many multiples. If one makes time to listen/read the suggestions I mentioned earlier, you too will know how you can protect yourself from the coming meltdown. Then again, one can lead the horse to the water trough but we certainly can't make him drink. I guess in my twilight years I'm trying to be of help to the Rugby community. We don't have much time to prepare.

A few years back out Cowra-Orange way I saw a tremendously strong juniors organisation - kids everywhere playing on grounds as hard as Lidcombe Oval under ice. Talking with an old fella at Cowra Hotel I found myself with one of the grandfathers of country rugby, affable, modest, charming, a fountain of knowledge and known to everybody everywhere in rugby - I checked up later with Mick Ellem and others up here (I'd have to search old diaries to find his name). His account over a couple of hours was of an excellent union with good people and good planning well established. Southern Inland is a bit south of there, I think, Two Waggas through to the MIA which has lots of cross border Aussie Rules influence. If they're doing well that's a good sign.