Keep Rebel rugby alive, or lose Melbourne forever

In this season of Super Rugby Survivor, we hear constant chatter that one of the Australian teams will be voted off the island.

Many have suggested snuffing out the Melbourne Rebels’ torch. This has not been helped by a start to the Super Rugby season that has seen the Rebels let in seven and 11 tries in their first two games.

It is fair to say that defence is something that the Rebels need to work on. So as a rugby convert who has spent almost all of his life in footy-mad Melbourne, let me make a modest defence of the Rebels.

The Rebels’ current struggles need to be put in context. It is not easy being an expansion team.

Just ask the Sydney Swans, who spent the best part of 15 years trying to get rugby-obsessed Sydneysiders to take them seriously.

It took help from legendary coach Ron Barassi before the Swans got self belief as a team and became a solid fixture on the sporting landscape.

The AFL are trying to repeat this magic with GWS and the Gold Coast, all of which is not without its trials and tribulations.

Yet there is no doubting the AFL’s steadfastness in sticking with these teams as they build support in their communities.

Rugby folk north of the Murray probably do not fully appreciate how hard it is to get noticed in Melbourne if you’re not playing Aussie Rules.

The Rebels are now in their seventh season in Super Rugby and there is no doubt that it has been tough for the Rebels to get crowds in the gate.

It shows the grip that footy has in this town that the AFL can start its AFLW competition literally from scratch, and 22,000 people show up to its first game.

Games between AFL heavyweights Hawthorn, Collingwood, Essendon or Geelong regularly pull 50,000+ crowds.

The Rebels are lucky to get 12,000 at AAMI Park on a good day – and that’s usually when they are playing a NZ team and a bunch of Kiwi expats come along to support the Chiefs or Crusaders.

It does not help that Super Rugby is such a hard product to sell to Melbournians. To the uninitiated, rugby union looks more or less like a bunch of guys all piling on top of each other until the referee blows his whistle for some random reason.

Take someone to an AFL game and you can explain the basic rules in about five minutes. Ingrained in the fabric of this city is the heritage and tradition of VFL/AFL rivalries that are over 100 years old, given new life with every passing year.

By contrast, Super Rugby offers teams whose names don’t even so much evoke the place they are from – the Cheetahs, the Jaguares and the Sunwolves. You can see why people here might shrug.

Given these challenges, I would suggest that the Rebels’ struggles to date are hardly unexpected.

If rugby packs up and leaves town, there will be no going back. The sport will have lost all credibility. It will only reinforce the suspicion that the rah-rahs at the ARU, steeped in the rugby traditions of Sydney, could not really care less about growing the game elsewhere in the nation.

This city – already home to 4.5 million people and adding close to 100,000 people every year – will be lost to the game forever.

Other footy codes, most notably rugby league and soccer, will be grateful to have one less competitor for the attention of the city’s hearts and minds. Rugby league has stuck it out for two decades and is not going anywhere.

Yet there is potential for the Rebels. I am lifelong North Melbourne Kangaroos fan who took up playing union at the tender age of 32, and am now totally absorbed in the game.

There is a surprisingly strong level of latent support for the game in Melbourne, which mainly stems from people not originally from here – Kiwis, Islanders, Brits, Irish and South Africans.

These expats are the lifeblood of community rugby. Melbourne’s growing Polynesian community in particular is the heart and soul of the suburban game.

AAMI Park is a fantastic venue to watch rugby, located in the heart of the city. The Rebels count more than a few Wallabies in their current playing group.

The Rebels’ new owners have pointed out that for Fox Sports, Melbourne is the second-best advertising market in Australia. We should not go all weak at the knees because a couple of NZ sides (one last years’ champions, at home) get a run-on two weeks in a row.

There is no doubt there is a lot more that can be done to put the Rebels on a more secure footing.

Fix Super Rugby to have more local derbies – we can always get excited about hating on teams from Queensland and NSW.

Build the links between Super Rugby and the grassroots – if we have to give away tickets to local clubs just to put bums on seats, then so be it.

Do more at the games to help non-rugby types understand how the game is played and build their passion.

But most of all, the ARU must end the toxic chatter that the team is on the chopping block by making a definitive statement that it is in the expansion of the game for the long haul.

If not, then it is hard to ask Melbournians for loyalty when the game does not show it to them.

Seven years might seem like a long time, but in terms of sport in this town it is just a blink of the eye. It is high time rugby took the long view.