Australia is currently ranked seventh in world rugby. If rugby bashing were a sport, it would rank first, with daylight second.
Much of the damage comes from within, amplified by journalists and commentators acting like picadors eagerly lancing an already wounded bull.
Since the high-water mark of World Cup triumph in 1999 and the successful hosting of the 2003 event, an era when Bledisloe Cup matches played to huge live and television audiences, rugby has not only slipped from the consciousness of many casual fans but has also disenchanted many true believers.
Of the many reasons for this, a few stand out.
- the growth of the professional game in the UK and France (and increasingly in Japan), placing a small commercial market like Australia at a comparative disadvantage, placing financial pressure on administrators;
- that in order to counter that disadvantage, Australian rugby partnering with New Zealand, South Africa and Argentina in SANZAAR, an alliance that provides the benefit of an aggregated revenue stream, but incurs other costs and inhibitions, that fuel dissenting voices who would prefer rugby to be domestically focused;
- rugby spending perceived to be weighted disproportionately towards the professional game and high-performance programs at the expense of grassroots rugby;
- societal and demographic change and economic concerns imposing significant challenges upon amateur rugby clubs;
- the continued reluctance of some parochial stakeholders to respect governance and work together for the common good of the game;
- a lack of player and coach development in the 2000s feeding into sustained lack of success at the elite level (18 years without the Bledisloe Cup, current world ranking of seventh, continuation of poor Super Rugby results);
- a lingering disenchantment over the axing of the Western Force from Super Rugby in 2017;
- the chronic inability of rugby to market itself effectively to its existing and potential fan-base and to take control of the narrative around the game; and
- the relative strength of AFL and NRL in the domestic market in terms of their ability to attract the cream of young talent, soak up sponsorship dollars and dominate media coverage (an issue for all other sports).
To illustrate the final point, following the Rebels win last week against the Waratahs, a reporter from The Age completed his match report, added quotes from the two coaches at their press conference and filed his copy.
Yet on Saturday morning the Rebels’ third win in ten years against Australia’s largest rugby state was deemed so inconsequential that it warranted no mention – not even a paragraph in the short bullet-point coverage given to so-called lesser sports.
(Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)
Other complaints relate to the game itself – too boring, dominated by referees, too many scrums, too many mauls et cetera. However, just like any sport, rugby is no different in delivering frustration, controversy and beauty. France 27 defeating Wales 23 was a tremendous match, Scotland 17 defeating Italy 0 – two flawed sides – was a dud. Where is the crisis in that?
I’d defy anyone to watch the Crusaders 33-13 win against the Highlanders on Friday night and articulate what is wrong with rugby. Both sides played with pace, intent, physicality and skill from start to finish, ensuring great entertainment for a near sell-out crowd.
The way Crusaders centre Jack Goodhue drew three defenders to him before releasing Tom Christie for a 19th-minute try was superb, as was the reply, a superb bullet pass four minutes later from Josh Ioane for Michael Collins to score in the corner.
There is little inherently wrong with the game. That it is so difficult to recall the last time there was a similar spectacle featuring two Australian sides speaks only to what has been ailing the Australian game.
(Ashley Feder/Getty Images)
Whether it is because of culture, coaching or lack of competition for places, there is a whole generation of players who have been left behind by advancement in other rugby nations. It is wrong to claim that Australian rugby is doing nothing about this, and the continued co-operation of the Super Rugby franchises, recent performances at under-20 and schoolboy level and the injection of a new coaching and selection team for the Wallabies all point to a brighter future.
Further, all who witnessed the Brumbies address the need to find more urgency and daring in their game and turn that into a comprehensive 26-14 win over the unbeaten Chiefs in Hamilton know that the negativity is grossly overstated.
Logic dictates that progress will continue to be a gradual, non-linear process. A key point of difference between New Zealand and Australian players over the last 15 years – rugby instinct – cannot be taught after a player graduates into a Super Rugby franchise. Innate rugby IP must be acquired early and accumulate throughout a player’s development.
It is disingenuous of commentators to point to individual results and correlate that to a further decline in Australian rugby. Decline in rugby and decline in the support for rugby are two different things.
It is here where lines are blurred between the reporting and analysis of what is actually occurring, and being an agent of and partly responsible for the gloom that pervades rugby. If you kick a dog often enough and hard enough, at some point that dog is going to believe that it is unworthy.
Those frustrated by misinformation and muckraking that passes for rugby coverage in Australia’s media are often advised to ignore it. This would be fine if the negative coverage was balanced by positive (it isn’t) or didn’t play such an important role in shaping the general narrative around the sport.
Opinions are formed from what is reported in the mainstream media – whether or not such reports are arrant nonsense (Israel Folau walked away with an $8 million settlement from Rugby Australia), or misguided (it is possible for Australia to support a domestic professional rugby competition that would retain leading players in Australia).
No better example was provided last Thursday by news.com.au reporter Nic Savage in an article tastefully entitled ‘Super Rugby 2020: The biggest eyesore in Australian sport’. No hyperbole there.
Savage tossed together a grab-bag of issues – the Folau saga, the Wallabies’ quarter-final exit at the World Cup, Quade Cooper, Will Genia and Bernard Foley “abandoning” Super Rugby and a “tumultuous twelve months off the field” – to conclude that these were “inevitably taking its toll” and responsible for Australian franchises once again performing poorly at the start of this season.
Savage pointed to the decline in matchday crowds for Australian franchises in 2020 but, because it didn’t suit his narrative, failed to provide the context that the Waratahs had played only one home match (in Newcastle) and the Reds none.
Little wonder that reader comments below the article were uniformly ill-informed (all sic, comments in brackets are mine).
“I love sport but wince at the whole jock thing rugger players ooze coupled with the superior complex of many of the supporters”
“I think Ticky Forrest, is an even bigger problem. He wants to start a rival rugby union Franchise of his teams. Given the fact, he tried to negotiate with Raelene Castle to keep the Western Force going, and he, was going to pay some serious money to Rugby Australia, to keep that team going. She knocked back his offer, and shut the franchise down (hard to know where to start with that one)”
“These days the only reason the people go to a game is to protest or complain about LBGT rights or something (wonder what the ‘something’ is?)”
“So many red and yellow cards, all of which have an enormous impact on the game, just look at the Brumbies versus Highlanders game last weekend (the yellow card to Sio Tomkinson was condemned only because his shoulder charge to the head actually met the red card threshold)”
“Rugby in Australia is played by predominately Christian schools and thus its supporters are predominately Christian (really?)”
“The Force has decent crowds, but Castle opted for the TV money option of keeping the Rebels (the decision to cut the Force from Super Rugby was taken long before Raelene Castle was appointed CEO)”
“Develop a competition that is club based with teams from Australia, New Zealand and Japan (and aren’t clubs in New Zealand and Japan eagerly waiting for that to happen?)”
“Castles has destroyed this great game in Australia”
(Tracey Nearmy/Getty Images)
Anti-establishment mouthpiece Alan Jones continues to pepper his weekly tirades with contradiction and ill logic. It shouldn’t matter, yet he damages the game because people, too many of them, believe this stuff and repeat it as gospel.
On Friday, writing in The Australian, Jones lamented another failing of Rugby Australia, the signing of 16-year-old Kings School, Parramatta, rugby player Joseph Sualli by NRL side South Sydney.
In the same article Jones called for an immediate divorce from SANZAAR but failed to explain how the resultant drop in revenue would make it near impossible for Rugby Australia to retain Sualli and other schoolboy talents in the face of competition from big-spending rugby league scouts. Go figure.
Jones also called for Australian rugby to “embrace New Zealand as we did years ago when Australian provinces ruled the world”. Exactly which years were they? And is New Zealand really waiting to be embraced?
In 2017 Sydney Morning Herald journalist Malcolm Knox hit the funny bone with his description of Super Rugby as “Unleaded Rugby”. In case the message was missed the first time Knox was at it again on Friday, repeating the same joke three more times before determining that the solution for Australian rugby was “for it to become a game shaped by, responsive to, and designed for Australia”.
If we can’t beat others at rugby, instead of working together to get better let’s just invent a different game to play among ourselves.
Knox pointed to rugby’s “international pretensions”, a sneering way to describe a sport which has been truly international since 1871 and recently conducted a World Cup in Japan that drew over 400,000 international visitors and generated US$450 million in revenue for World Rugby and the tournament hosts.
Like others, Knox touts a domestic solution, although his suggestion of “an autonomous breakaway competition, such as Andrew Forrest has proposed, might represent its (rugby’s) only feasible future”, seems at odds with this. The logic of Australia withdrawing from a competition containing many of the world’s leading players, including rugby’s two powerhouse nations, to join a competition which features players of vastly inferior standard playing in China being more palatable for Australian audiences is baffling.
Soccer has long struggled to establish a firm professional foothold in Australia. The world’s best players and Australia’s best players play in far richer overseas leagues. But note how when overseas clubs visit Australia for exhibition matches hundreds of thousands of fans flock to these games for a glimpse of star international players.
Consider Kylian Mbappe, goal scorer for France in their 4-2 win over Croatia in the final of the 2018 football World Cup. Were he and his Paris Saint-Germain side playing Melbourne Victory this weekend, TV and print media would almost certainly be full of anticipation for his appearance, not gloomy stories about Victory’s lowly ladder position and the A-League’s dire TV ratings.
Like Mbappe, Makazole Mapimpi was a try scorer for the Springboks in their World Cup final win over England. Yet Mapimpi, a magnificent athlete whose finishing pace and power was largely the difference between the Sharks and the Rebels, slipped in and out of Ballarat without anyone seeming to know or care.
It is not the role of media to cheerlead for a sport. But where Australian rugby is concerned, it has become too easy for lazy journalists and editors to dog whistle to audiences who neither know nor care their opinions are based on ignorance and dumbed-down misinformation, lack rigour and feed into a self-fulfilling prophecy that rugby is in a death spiral.
Included in the 400,000 rugby fans visiting Japan for the World Cup were 35,000 Australians. They, along with many thousands of other rugby fans, club members and players, understand that Australian rugby faces stern challenges, but they continue to derive enjoyment from the sport.
These people deserve rugby coverage that is an honest and reasoned account of good and bad, and which celebrates what the game provides.
Ball Burster
Roar Rookie
If we can't accommodate players with Christian beliefs, in particular players with Polynesian backgrounds, we are stuffed. The affidavits in the Folau case need to be taken seriously. They might well be based on misunderstandings, but blokes like Kepu and Keravi don't submit such things lightly. It was obvious from the beginning that the RA stance against Folau would likely divide the players - the affidavits are evidence that it did. The All Blacks would never have allowed the Folau fiasco to develop the way it did.
Gloria
Roar Rookie
No, the figures you quoted are self reported and hugely inflated to encourage government funding. Football is not ‘struggling’. It is exploding and the structures in place will ensure that continues.
Maximus Insight
Guest
TWAS, I can certainly concede to a lower knowledge of Australian rugby than you and perhaps other people you've had discussions "going around in circles" about. Also, I have not at any stage thought you were having a dig at me! By fools gold my point was that the shorter term expediency of getting more money through the inclusion of SA in super rugby is at the expense of the games commercial performance in Australia longer term. Obviously there is a risk of moving away from this model - the question then is it a risk worth taking? It seems to me the status quo is white flag slowly being raised. The Melbourne Rebels - that play in a wealthy city of 5 million with a significant number of people with an affinity and knowledge of rugby union (far more than league). They have clearly struggled in the Super Rugby and, I suspect on the current trajectory, will cease to exist at some point in the near future. I strongly suspect that they would be a massive asset and well supported in a meaningful Australian or TT comp and yet they won't exist by the time the "low risk" approach of sticking with the status quo hits its inevitable end point. There seems to be a combination of two streams of flawed thinking that prevents clearly smart rugby fans like you and Geoff from seeing this inevitability: 1. That Australian rugby (and Australia generally) is small, inevitably has limited resources and that thriving relevant domestic league is not vital to the game's longevity. Australia has the biggest rugby football footprint in the world. The NRL is significantly bigger than either English or French Premierships. 2. That rugby is some global behemoth that Australians should be in awe of and that the risk to the short / mid term success of the national team by moving away from this silly proto-professional relic of a competition is too much to bear. The reality is that a large number of traditional rugby fans in Australia are now more likely to engage with the NRL or the AFL than elite rugby. Granted there is a large degree of historical advantage that those leagues have but a large part of it is the absence of a relevant elite rugby competition. Trying to convince people that Super Rugby is like the EPL and / or insulting people as being insular or scared of international competition is at best counterproductive (not saying you've done either of these things, but, you know, someone has).
Maximus Insight
Guest
No, the Ausplay survey is a government run survey that - very much UNLIKE the Roy Morgan survey - uses best practice statistical methods. Roy Morgan is a marketing panel survey whose purpose is not scientific measurement it is a large clunky grab of information it can package up and sell commercially. The organised junior netball numbers for girls are double that of soccer (which also includes futsal). Note that these numbers are specifically 1. organised and 2. out of school. Hopefully you have enough wits about you to know now you were talking out of your hat before More generally, TWAS is dead right. Elite Australian soccer is struggling just as much as rugby. It has the same problem with very limited resources domestically that are under threat, making it even harder to compete with the AFL and NRL as well as inflationary international environments in those sports.
Gloria
Roar Rookie
Pathetic attempt. The Roy Morgan polls are done using recognised best practice research methods. The accuracy is proven and verified. A very small proportion of people sometimes hide their voting intention or change their mind. It’s enough to get a different result as we did in 2019, however the difference was quite minimal statistically. People don’t lie about whether they play netball or football and don’t change their mind. You are desperate and clutching as straws. Face reality, do you live in tbe real world. About every third family has a child playing football and many of those are girls. The figures you quoted are self-reported by the sport bodies themselves and are notoriously overstated. The netball figures include primary school kids who play once a year at school in netball sponsored sports days. The independent survey went directly to the people and asked them directly what sport they played. I know which numbers I trust.
Maximus Insight
Guest
Wow, so an official scientifically conducted government survey has "been exposed" where as Roy Morgan research - who no longer do political polling due to demonstrated incompetency - is to be accepted as credible? Keep dreaming, Gloria
Micko
Roar Rookie
Both soccer and rugby union are waging battles with grassroots that are detrimental though: soccer in Australia is trying to overcome the limited NSL ethnic club model yet thousands of fans won't buy in eg. South Melbourne. Rugby union elevated SOO sides to weekly full professional teams then ignored their grassroots eg. SS & Brisbane comp without involving them in the pathway to semi-pro/full pro and thousands of these fans won't buy in to NRC, and increasingly SR as well.
Micko
Roar Rookie
That was a personal, spiteful article masked as being some "satire" piece. Good satire on a sports column should involve humour and mirth...like Dane's cricket articles if you've read them.
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
Without TV numbers those structures can’t be funded...
Gloria
Roar Rookie
For football it isn’t just about tv numbers. Football fans watch the EPL and similar. It’s about the heath of the code in Australia. Football has put the structures in place and the game is exploding domestically. Wake up TWAS, football is annihilating rugby in Australia.
Gloria
Roar Rookie
It’s not just about tv ratings mate. It’s about the health of the code in Australia. Football is thriving and growing massively. Rugby is dying and SR as the prime marketing tool is the reason. Football fans turn to the EPL and similar for their satisfaction. Rugby has nothing outside of the tests and SR to attract support. Stop being so narrow and full of ridiculous rhetoric. Football is a big slating rugby domestically in Australia. It is thriving. the
Gloria
Roar Rookie
Sucker. Those figures have been exposed as highly inflated and completely inaccurate. They are as fake as the RA numbers. An independent audit exposed the truth. “ More girls now playing soccer than netball”. Soccer, or football, is now more popular among girls aged 6-13 than netball, according to the latest findings by the market research company Roy Morgan Research.” November 2015 https://www.google.com.au/amp/s/amp.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2015/nov/25/more-girls-are-now-playing-football-than-netball-and-thats-a-healthy-competition
Tom G
Roar Rookie
The ongoing negative narrative is spot on. Just today i was in a coffee shop and picked up a complimentary ‘newspaper’ the Daily Telegraph. Realising that reading the front section of this paper is like a tactile version of Alan Jones radio rants i elected to flip it over to tge sports section. To my surprise, week 5 of the Super 15 and Newscorp having a stake in the game through Fox... not one article... zip, nada! I thought, that this was possibly a preview of What we can expect post TV deal if rights go elsewhere... but no . On returning this vile rag, the front page screamed out a headline”we stand by Israel “. The front page piece written by Jamie Pandaram posited that a) Folau’s treatment had practically led to a polynesian player revolt as they had wanted to support Isheforreal and were ‘gagged’ by RA and b) there was a strong belief that Australia would’ve gone much further in RWC19 had he been pandered to. The evidence? South Africa won and they are a predominantly Christian side. Folau used to lead prayers for the team and that fell to no-one after he left presumably. So we weren’t underperforming at the WC, God himself had shunned us. Very sound logic there Jamie. On that basis we should forget recruiting from schools and clubs and park the scouts bus outside a seminary. Also by this logic Tonga, Fiji and Samoa must be specials for 23...Just ask Jamie. I know that the article is just another chance to sink the boot into RA as they try to screw them on a rights deal but how much more blood can they try extract from this stone. Folau is gone and seems happy with his new french League chums. He’s got a nice golden handshake and a new contract. He’s even promised(again) to be a good boy on twitter. I’d say the Telegraph should be ashamed of itself but they literally have no shame at all
Sam
Guest
Geoff, great article. Loved some of your observations. Rugby will never be able to compete with League and AFL when talent is coming out of high school, or even before. Rugby needs to endear boys & girls to the game before that point in time. In my opinion rugby as a game and a profession has so many things going for it. 1. Easily the most inclusive sport 2. Values the game teaches you 3. Camaraderie 4. Multi faceted skill set required 5. The people involved with the sport (grass roots) 6. Tactically superior 7. International appeal Amongst other things. I know people may pick that list apart and I also know other sports also feature some of those great features. But those are rugby’s most valuable currency. I know money talks but so does love and passion for this great game of rugby. Obviously stories about the likes of Joseph Sualli jumping across to league because Sth Sydney can show they value his talent by offering a big contract for a 16 year old. The stories that don’t get written are about the true rugby kids that knock back similar offers because they love rugby and actually, truly want to become a wallaby. We need to endear kids to the game early. And we need to trust, empower and educate local clubs to do that. Rugby is a great game and product, rugby in Australia is about to go through a renaissance, Brumbies already a title contender. Reds potentially could be, they are looking very promising. Tahs going through a rebuild but they will get there sooner than expected because the have a great coach. Rebels have the squad just need to put it all together. Wallabies will benefit from that success and higher standards met. Plus a fresh coach with well appointed support staff. We literally just need to get out of our own way (media & acidic keyboard warriors) Watch this space.
Train Without A Station
Roar Guru
It's not fools gold, because Australia has never shown the support for rugby in Australia to replace it. It's more last chance saloon. Now I'm not saying we can't get that support, but it's not going to happen quickly. And if it doesn't happen quickly, you can't afford to give up the revenue because you go broke and end up like the A-League where it's perceived below the top leagues. Joining may very well be in the NZRU's long term interests. But they have no interest. To fund 8 teams you need about $48M a year. Currently Aus spends $25M on Super Rugby. Salary cap of $3M a year just means weaker teams and lower quality rugby. Any mechanism that prevents free movement of Wallabies comes with risks. That's why central contracts exist. To maximise the chances of maintaining your players. As for saving money for scrapping the NRC. It's a cost neutral venture so there is no saving. I'm not trying to have a dig at you, but rugby fans have been having these discussions for a long time and they go round and round in circles because every positive brings it's own negative and limitations. Probably why we remain in Super Rugby. Because no alternative exists without very big risks.
LeftRight
Guest
Putting aside structures, administration etc, Rugby can be an extremely frustrating sport to watch and hence people aren't watching in sufficient numbers. One of the benefits Rugby has compared to League is continuity, but continuity rearly occurs. Penalties, scrum resets and the like can completely stop as game, as can whistle happy referees & TMOs. Cut the rubbish in scrums (educate players that scrums are a restart of play, not an opportunity to cheat by rolling shoulders, pulling back, angling in .....), give the attack more space by making the defence stand 5m from a ruck/maul not just last feet. There are undoubtedly lots of other opportunities to improve vthe flow of the game. The game at the professional SR and international levels is not about the players or officials, it's about bums on seats in stadiums, eyes on TV screens & prominent reporting in the media. That's the sum of it.
gatesy
Roar Guru
I put a lot of it down to the Pulver - Cheika era - Rugby was flapping in the breeze, Cronyism was rife in selections and fringe players looked overseas to better their chances- for example, it's interesting that you have Ben Meehan in the starting side for London Irish with Nick Phipps coming off the bench), and who is Dave Porecki? In literally one sentence on one day a couple of weeks ago, Mr Rennie made it clear that there would be no favourites - we'll have to wait and see how that plays out, but it must have given every Super Rugby player hope. That, couple with teh exodus of many senior players, being replaced by the incoming mob of Under 20's and the NRC unearthing talent, I think things are on the up, personally
Frank Hafner
Guest
The once honorable sport of rugby is now a sport of the highest bidder. That seems how much of the world works now. I’m sure honor will return. I don’t know how it will happen.
Jimmy
Roar Guru
Code wars may be pointless, but they are a staple of the modern media and aren’t going anywhere, especially when you have League and Union teams right next to each other it’s an easy comparison to make (although sometimes a lazy one). There may be no class distinction in NZ and from playing a lot of Rugby in Wales I noticed there is not much class distinction there also. But here it is alive and well, and that’s ok, but the point I’m trying to make is by continuing that culture the game is missing out on a whole section of really engaged sports fans. In the past that may not have been a problem but now with falling audiences maybe it needs to be addressed.
Micko
Roar Rookie
This is the same ridiculous petty nonsense you kiwis endlessly spout Geoff. Australia is a country that consistently makes the top 10 Olympic games medal tally which implies a wide variety of sports that we're highly competitive in. Tennis & swimming we're only historically outranked by the yanks. We consistently dominate the Commonwealth Games (albeit with only a small percentage of the world's competitive sporting nations there for an outdated tribute to the British empire, even you kiwis are there!) Rugby union is a sport that will never be a major thing here, which is lucky for you kiwis and your all blacks. This petty kiwi notion that Australia is intimidated by international competition (really meaning we don't focus on kiwis) is rubbish. It's just a quirk of fate that Australia's two dominant football codes are essentially domestic, which bugs you kiwis for some reason. You kiwis would amputate a limb off your body to have rugby union have mass public interest, and for the Bledisloe Cup to be a major sports event in Australia. We've already made a FIFA age final: U17 boys losing to Brazil in the final on penalties in good old NZ Geoff in 1999! We moved our soccer to Asia out of Oceania to get improved international competition, we're we've now won the Asian Cup in 2015, had an aussie club win the Asian Champions' League, and have now qualified for every WC thus far since moving to the Asian Confederation. And I thought soccer was the "world game" Geoff? :shocked: Australia won two rugby union world cups before your guys did Geoff in a sport that half of aussies don't even know or care about, and yet you dominate the sport. How did that happen? Your stubborn arrogance and refusal to pay attention to what people like me are saying like: don't treat your grassroots supporters like crap, don't give them condescending lectures, expand from your grassroots strongholds into a professional setup is just shocking! The incompetent ARU failed in this from day one, and keep making the same mistake over and over. If you've been in Australia 30 years Geoff surely you've learnt how Australian sport culture is, and how to maximise support? Why do you keep singing from the same failed hymn sheet of the incompetent ARU administrators?!!!