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Opinion

The importance of morning rugby: Why the NRL needs to push UK advertising

Catherine Warr new author
Roar Rookie
23rd May, 2020
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Catherine Warr new author
Roar Rookie
23rd May, 2020
23

Picture this.

It’s another lazy Saturday morning in the UK with nothing to do. All the major sporting competitions have been halted as a result of the lockdown, and your craving for live sport has got so extreme that you’ve taken to watching the German Bundesliga, as it’s the only sport on.

This is the situation for many sports fans in the UK, and people who would never before consider watching German football matches are now turning in droves to watch them.

Like most sports, the Bundesliga matches mostly take place in the evenings. But you’ve just woken up, and you can’t wait that long. So you flick through Sky Sports to see what’s on – and what’s this? There are some men crashing into each other. Must be rugby.

And you’re interested, and it’s the only sport on at this time, so you carry on watching.

This is precisely the situation which, if utilised properly, could enable a miniature NRL boom in the UK.

I do not think it is much of an exaggeration to say that, outside of rugby league circles, the NRL has next to no presence in the UK. I can say confidently that the majority of the British public would be able to name an American football team faster than they could name an NRL team.

That’s not to say that rugby league itself doesn’t have a presence – it’s very much the opposite – but just that the NRL as a competition is largely unknown to those who do not actively watch or follow rugby league.

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Even I only came to know of the NRL through my interest in rugby league and I cannot remember, in the years before I was interested in the sport, ever really noticing or hearing the NRL in the news or media.

This is a tragedy, because morning rugby is God’s gift to mankind.

It holds an exclusive time slot. No other major sport – save cricket – occupies the morning hours, and during the 2019 rugby union World Cup many – including me – enjoyed the refreshing and unusual experience of watching live sport as you ate breakfast. It kick-started your day and provided good entertainment while you were waiting for your other sports to play in the afternoon or evening.

In fact, it became something of a ritual – at one point, to watch the Rugby World Cup in the morning became almost as normal as watching BBC Breakfast.

South Africa's players bow to the crowd

(Photo by Odd Andersen/AFP via Getty Images)

Even when other sports resume, the NRL will not have much competition for viewers – because the only other sport which occupies the morning slot is cricket, and even then, it has considerably fewer fixtures than rugby league.

And when you consider the prime time slot – 10 o’clock on a Saturday morning, when most people are beginning to wake up or are sitting around the kitchen table – it would form the perfect entertainment and serve as the entrée to a whole course of the day’s sports; morning rugby league, soon followed by the 3:00 pm football (soccer) kickoff, and finally the 7:45 rugby kickoff.

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I do not think I am alone among British rugby league fans when I say I am frustrated at the lack of attention the NRL receives in the UK media. Most of the leg-work has to be done by journalists and fans themselves, and though a large portion of the blame falls to the UK media itself, I do think that the NRL could do more too.

A properly funded and executed marketing campaign could establish the NRL as a legitimate form of morning television, and more importantly – it could imprint it firmly into the public consciousness.

If the NFL could, through the power of cultural osmosis and marketing, have a sport as alien as American football grow so popular in the UK, then I am confident that the same could be done for the NRL.

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