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Welcome to part five of the IRB report on registered player numbers. This week we will focus on the Asian region, which represents 59 per cent of the world’s population.
The Asian region is represented by the ARFU (Asian Rugby Football Union). In 2009, the ARFU had 15 member unions and six associate unions.
However, in 2010, the Arabian Gulf Union was disbanded, leaving 14 member unions. Iran, however, was then added as an associate union, bringing the total to seven associate unions for the ARFU in 2010.
In 2010, the ARFU has shown growth in numbers for eleven of the member unions, a decrease in two of the unions and one union which did not have a census for the 2010 year.
Now let’s take a look at some of the individual nations and the playing numbers. In the ARFU, there is only one super power at the moment: Japan.
At last count in 2009, they had 122,598 registered players, the most out of the ARFU. Japan is also the only ARFU nation, that I can recall, that has a professional league competition – the Top League. Of note is the fact that younger foreign players seem to be coming to play in Japan, which could mean that Japan is no longer seen as the retirement home for rugby.
The Top League averages crowds of roughly 4500, and in 2011, the league had an increase in crowds by four per cent when compared to last year.
However, it could be much bigger.
There seems to be huge crowds for university rugby matches. This year alone I saw a match between Tokyo Uni and Waseda draw a crowd of 25,458. If only they could get that support for the Top League…
The Japan Rugby Football Union wishes to get 200,000 registered players by the 2019 World Cup. To do this, they must tap into the younger generation. Overall, Japan is going well, but could progress more rapidly if they had some more forward thinking administration.
Now we come to Sri Lanka. Last year seemed to be a year of turmoil for them. They were ousted by the IRB as full members, but this year were given back their full member status.
Sri Lanka has the second highest number of registered in the ARFU. However, they had a decline in 2010 when compared to 2009. They had a drop to 103,325 when compared to the 121,398 in 2010. They seem to suffer from the same ailment of Japan, in that rugby is quite popular at school level but rapidly declines after school.
This year in the Asian Five Nations, they drew a crowd of 4000 for their opening match, which indicates they have interest in the sport, and more must be done. Sevens is again the avenue in which this can be done.
Now Malaysia. Malaysia is a surprise. From memory the only thing rugby-related thing about Malaysia was the Cobra 10s tournament. Malaysia has the third highest number of registered players in Asia. They had a growth of 46 per cent in playing numbers for 2010, a total of 60,030 registered players.
They seem to be taking rugby Sevens with deadly serious, after the Commonwealth Games in India last year where they failed to record a win, the entire Sevens management team were sacked!
China had 5430 registered players in 2010, a slight increase from 2009. They also held a successful Sevens event in the Asian Games, where they drew a total of over 80,000 fans over the three day rugby Sevens event.
India also showed growth of 26 per cent in 2010, up to 22,282 registered players.
Pakistan had a huge surge of numbers up to 4012 in 2010 compared to the 1000-plus in 2009. However, I doubt whether rugby will gain much popularity in the middle for some time to come with all that’s going on in that region at the moment.
Other nations that showed growth include Guam, Hong Kong, Kazakhstan, Korea, Phillipines, Singapore and Thailand. In the end it seems Sevens has been, and still will be, the main driving force of growing the game in Asia.
Overall the ARFU showed only a 1.4 per cent increase in playing numbers (361,876) for the 2010 year. This number should be much higher.
However, I am quietly optimistic that it grow more in the coming years, and at a much more exponential rate when the Olympic status of rugby is more entrenched.
I give the ARFU a pass mark… barely.
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