Wow. This article aged really really really REALLY badly. England is absolutely SLAUGHTERING Australia right now. 5th test is done. England have won unless it rains of course.
This is absolute domination by England. While we have chumps like Marnus scoring at under 11 s/r while England are consistently scoring at 5 rpo and YET we have clowns like Paul mocking bazball.
What is Australian cricket fans obsession with scoring slowly in tests???
Lets face it. We were very very very very lucky to retain the Ashes. How can anyone deny that England were the better team 3/5 tests?
It is now 22 years since we’ve won a test series in England btw.
p.s. Paul, you might want to drop the “expert” title.

Not saying either is better but realistically Portugal, with a population of 10 million, is never going to win a world cup. Since 1950 the smallest country (in terms of population) to win the world cup have been Argentina and Spain with populations currently around 46-47 million people.

You could make an argument that Portugal only reaching the final four once during Ronaldo’s time, in 2006, could count against him.

Croatia, with even a smaller population, has managed a 2nd and 3rd place.

Dont know if this is a serious article by a crazed person or an unfunny “satirical” article by a writer who probably thinks Peter Helliar is funny.

I dont know if something that only happens once every 4 years can “unite” us. And football definitely doesn’t unite us looking at A-League attendance and viewers.

Even the Asian Cup final in 2015 with Australia in the final couldnt sell out Stadium Australia. 76,000 crowd in a stadium that has 83,000 crowd capacity.

So our domestic competitions or confederation tournament cannot unite Australia.

As for soccer being the most played sport. Sure, by under 10s. I dont think you really can put too much value in how popular a sport is when most of the people playing said sport need their parents to help them tie the laces on their football boots.

And from the ages from 12-19 basketball would probably more popular than soccer. I enjoyed watching the Boomers finish 4th in the FIBA World Cup and grab a bronze at the Tokyo Olympics and really look forward to the 2023 world cup and 2024 Olympics way more than I could ever a soccer game.

Saying football unites Australia is like saying the summer Olympics unites Australia. Sure, the Olympics are hugely popular but in between those 4 years only diehards care about the sports in the Olympics and soccer.

AFL can claim to be the biggest sport in the country but it doesn’t really unite most of NSW, ACT or QLD. If the Swans aren’t playing the SBS foreign movie gets better ratings in Sydney than AFL. As for the GWS Giants no one in Sydney cares. I had forgotten GWS were called the Giants until I just looked it up. Most people have forgotten about them.

I dont think any sport will ever claim to “unite” Australia. Sporting events like the world cup and summer Olympics will temporarily unite Australia but in 6 months time how many Australians will be able to name a player from the Socceroos squad? About the same that can name a gold medallist from the Tokyo Olympics.

Yet Argentina have gold medals in all 3 events from previous Olympics. Does Australia?

Bruce is a great commentator on the big occasions like the big gold medal events, especially when an Australian isn’t competing, but for the majority of the time he makes me want to put earplugs in.

Channel 7 coverage of the Olympics has always been terrible. Gotta give credit to 7 that they gave us the ability to watch live feeds that don’t have Australian commentators.

Wait, are you serious?

Buddy, stop reading Ayn Rand books.

Unfortunately with Baynes out our chances of a medal are slim to none. Germany destroyed us on the boards and if that happens against better teams like Argentina or Spain let alone France, US or Slovenia, we’re doomed.

We still have a chance of beating Argentina but you can bet your life Luis Scola has been scheming on how to best exploit this problem.

Its always fun to shut up people who go on how great Australia are at sport on a per capita by bringing up New Zealand usually does better than us when it comes to per capita. (I’m not a Kiwi btw)

Though Australia does tend to get a lot of its gold medal in high profile sports like swimming where the Americans are usually incredibly strong. Since the end of WWII the US has only lost the gold medal tally twice in swimming: 1988 (to the doping East Germans) and Australia in 1956. Tied in 1952 with Hungary and of course weren’t there in 1980.

New Zealand tends to get its gold in sports where the US isn’t that strong. Especially sailing and canoeing and rowing.

And Argentina are great at team sports. Strong at Hockey, basketball, football and rugby plus qualifying for volleyball and handball. If you take that theres 8 team sports (plus water polo and baseball) then Argentina is the only country that qualified for 6/8 team sports.

The European soccer season for the major leagues and tournaments go for 364 days a year. Ok, that is only a slight exaggeration. But the season does last from August-June with July the ONLY month where there is no football.

if you include the qualifying rounds for the Champions League then its is basically 12 months a year with June-June season with a couple of weeks off in the middle of June.

Having said all that people don’t seem to get bored of soccer in Europe and around the world. Quite the opposite, they’re fanatical in preserver their bloated and corrupt leagues and tournaments as evidence by the attempted Super League. So I ask “Why are cricket fans so different?” Cricket fans spend more time devouring and attacking their own sport than they do watching it.

New Zealand hasn’t beaten Australia in the Trans-Tasman Trophy since the early 92-93.

Of course the difference is that Australia and New Zealand don’t square off in a test series every year like the Bledisloe. There has been only something like 31 tests since NZ last retained the Trans-Tasman compared to how many rugby internationals between the Wallabies and ABs.

The Wallabies just don’t get any meaningful time to build up to a Bledisloe series like they use to. Years of long Super Rugby seasons followed by Tri-Nations/Rugby Championship and then off to Spring/Autumn internationals left little time to build a national team.

New Zealand has way more rugby players and money (for rugby) than Australia. In all the other sports you mentioned Australia has more players and money.

Thats a massive hurdle to overcome.

Talk about living in the past.

Yes, Parramatta is not for Waratahs fans. That means mixing with the peasants out in the Western Suburbs.

How ghastly! (said in a posh upper class English accent)

Micko, if you’re the typical rugby fan then I’m glad the sport is almost dead in this country.

Ok, Pauline. Back to the fish and chip shop for you.

Because Rugby Australia doesn’t have the money to go it alone.

We’re a multicultural society where, especially in Sydney, a huge chunk of the population are not white nor born in Australia or speak English as a first language.

Considering that half of the country doesn’t player either rugby code, and in the half that Union is only interested in appealing to one demographic.

That makes for a small market.

Small market = less players = worse national and club level performances = less money.

Well, there is your point that players in Australia gravitate to other sports, I’d put basketball in there these days as well.

But his figures of 230,000 registered rugby players is 100% wrong.

WRONG. Australia has nowhere near 230,000 REGISTERED male rugby players. Not even REMOTELY close.

Estimates from 2012 puts it around 85,000.

https://web.archive.org/web/20120216122206/http://www.irb.com/unions/union=11000007/index.html

Do you think rugby has increased by registered 145,000 over the past 9 years?????

And why would you trust some English website to get it right????

From the wikipedia page https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_rugby_union_playing_countries#cite_note-australia-8

“Australia: Data listed in the table, including the total of 86,952 registered players, is from the archived IRB webpage as at 25 September 2011,[7] which allows for comparison to figures from other countries sourced from the same website in the same time frame. Participation figures recorded in later archives from the IRB include both registered and unregistered players (totals over 297,000 in 2012,[120] and over 482,000 in 2014,[121] and are therefore not useful in comparison to the rest of the table). Other sources, such as Ausport, put the overall number of rugby players as low as 42,100 but this is based on older data from 1999–2000.[122][123]”

So that useless English website included UNREGISTERED players. And what are unregistered players anyway? What is an unregistered rugby player? Someone who kicks a Gilbert around at the local park?

I’d suggest you contact the website administrators and have your comment and my reply removed to save yourself the embarrassment.

Really? I live near ANZ Stadium and I would go to Waratahs matches played there back when they were. I also used to see the moaning and groaning on Facebook by Tahs supporters in the Eastern Suburbs and North Shore complaining about travelling soooooooo far to Homebush and how terrible it was. Seriously, they used to talk like going to ANZ was like travelling to ISIS controlled Syria.

And the crowd at Waratahs games are whiter than Trump rallies.

Also take the Shute Shield finals played at North Sydney Oval in 2017-18 that got big crowds. I remember many in the rugby press claiming that “rugby isn’t dead” and that “grass-roots rugby was alive” but in reality those finals got big crowds because it was an opportunity for North Shore and Eastern Suburbs people to have a social gathering in North Sydney. I mean take a look at the decreased crowd for the 2019 played at the far far far far superior stadium, the new Bankwest Stadium in Parramatta. Why? Because the North Shore and Eastern Suburbs people didn’t want to travel all the way to Parramatta!

You might not like this fact. But that’s like not liking 2 + 2 = 4. You might prefer 2 + 2 = 5 but the reality is that in Australia’s biggest and most important rugby area there is a class divide and until that divide is removed the Australian national team will never ever see the success of the 1991-2001 era repeated.

Definitely was short-sighted to agree to a 3 match annual Bledisloe Cup series on top of non-Bledisloe Cup tests. It was beneficial when it started since the Wallabies were on an upswing and winning regularly. But Australian rugby always has its downs and now its harder to rebuild since we’re getting pummelled by the (more often than not) best team in rugby.

Its like the ever expanding Super Rugby. Australia just doesn’t have the depth in rugby to play that many matches over such a lot period of time. Super Rugby was turned into long and bloated European soccer style league. Maybe beneficial to Super Rugby but not to the national team.

Rugby – the sport that went to Western Australia (which is hardcore 100% Aussie Rules) before it went to Western Sydney.

I wonder how many people in the comments section who are against expanding rugby to the Western Suburbs are still support the Reds? Where’s the logic in that?

Fact is if Australia ever wants to be competitive in rugby again we need a bigger player pool. That’s just the reality of modern, professional sport. I’ll give you an example.

Australia and New Zealand play a lot of similar sports. In most of them Australia has more players. Cricket, League, basketball, football for example. Those sports have their following in NZ, there are teams from NZ in NRL, NBL and A-League, but when it comes to international matches Australia wins more often than not against New Zealand.

There is one exception where a sport is much more widely played in NZ than Australia. And that of course is rugby and I don’t need to explain the Wallabies record against the All Blacks over the past 10-12 years.

Fact is a bigger player pool will result in a better national team.

And its thinking like this that is the cause of rugby dying in this country. North Shore and Eastern Suburbs elites not wanting the game to spread outside their insular little areas.

I mean you poor people will have to travel to the Western Suburbs to watch games live. How ghastly! Mixing with the great unwashed must be terrible for you.

Club rugby is thriving? Maybe ask Penrith fans … Oh, wait. That’s in the western suburbs. We all know that Sydney ends at Drummoyne.

I wouldn’t call a bunch of North Shore socialites rocking up to North Sydney Oval for a afternoon of hobnobbing an indication of the game “thriving”. Quite the opposite, actually. Rugby is more insular and class orientated than ever.

Sick is used as an excuse way too often in sport. Perkins has admitted in interviews that his preparation wasn’t the best and that he left starting his training for Atlanta until too late. From memory Kowalski beat Perkins in the 1500m Aus trials.

Things that inspired me was watching Perkins break the 1500m AND 800m freestyle records at the 1994 Commonwealth games and then a few weeks later going out and winning the gold at the 1994 world Championships. Or watching Perkins win gold at the 1992 Olympics with a record record (at the time). Or his race with the drug cheat Jorg Hoffman in 1991 World Champions in Perth. Or Perkins racing at the Sydney Olympics and getting a silver with a time 3 seconds better than Atlanta. Or Perkins coming out of nowhere as a kid at the 1990 Commonwealth and getting silver to Glenn Houseman and breaking the 15 minute barrier.

Thats 5 races by Perkins more inspirational than his 1996 swim, which by his standards was pretty mediocre. Than again, as I said before there is nothing Australians love more than glorifying mediocrity. I mean look at the AFL and NRL