Ok, so you acknowledge that the printed version of the HS was overwhelmingly positive about the match and the online version was mostly positive. If that’s a vendetta on the part of the editorial staff it’s a pretty cr@p one! Think we’ll probably need to agree to disagree on this one.

The front page of the online section – what on earth is that? I’ve just told you that the print version depicted the game in an overwhelmingly positive but you’re still focusing on one negative article that you managed to find online. Think about it for a minute Kasey and maybe you’ll realize that the war on soccer is just being fought in your head. In recent times I’ve even seen soccer fans quoting random online contributors to AFL forums as evidence that the world is against them.

Life really is too short. Focus on the positive stuff and your stay on the planet will be much more agreeable.

I wouldn’t touch a latte before midday!

Kasey – this is in fact complete bollocks. I remember reading this particular meme on the roar the other day whilst at my local cafe with my cappuccino sitting on a copy of the herald sun so decided to check the paper for the offending article. In fact the soccer game had several pages devoted to coverage of the result, tactics, opinions etc including the entire backpage. I couldn’t find a single mention of the cited incidents. Perhaps it was buried somewhere in the main section, but in the sports section it was all about the game itself

Thanks for bringing this to our attention Mike, this is indeed a very serious attack on the game and we must marshall all of our resources for a counter attack. But the situation is in fact far more serious than even you realize. The other day I was on the tram and over heard one guy say to another guy that he once knew a guy whose sister dated a guy who had a work colleague who apparently said that he didn’t like soccer. We must find this unbeliever and punish him most severely! As long as such infidels live amongst us we must never rest brothers!!!

Tristan

I think the reason this particular article and others like it have attracted such ridicule is that they present what is a wholly subjective opinion and dress it up with absurd claims to legitimacy and evidence. If people don’t like the BBL and hope it fails that’s fine, that is indeed an opinion that people have a right to express. When people make claims about vast masses of disenfranchised state cricket fans, this is not opinion, this is fantasy land stuff.

Would the Roar publish an article where I claim that Australian Football is about to take over from cricket as the no. 1 sport in India, based upon the fact that there are at least 200 million passionate Collingwood fans living there who just don’t happen to watch the game, talk about the game, play the game or even think about the game, but certainly exist because I once saw a guy who looked a bit Indian kicking a Sherrin in my local park?

Publish much more of this nonsense about state cricket fans and you’re at genuine risk of becoming like the History Channel, where serious documentaries have given way to endless parades of weirdos talking about ancient aliens and how Hitler’s pet dog had ESP etc. etc.

So if I lose I have to watch a movie that everyone says is completely awesome and that I was planning to watch over Christmas anyway? I’ll take that bet…

I only hope it can reach the heights of what is generally considered the finest sports movie of all time – Dodgeball!

Well, I think John gets the 2011 Roar award for unintentional comedy gold. The huge level of passionate following for state cricket…that doesn’t actually attend games, watch on TV, buy merchandise, join as a member or ever talk about this passion with others. Using what I will now describe as ‘the John Hunt paradigm’, I have similarly discovered huge, passionate followings for AFL in Manchester, Rugby Union in Miami and Ice Hockey in South Africa. Sure you can’t see ’em, but remember they’re like the iceberg…

I’m always intrigued when people make the argument that some particular sport, or form of sport in the case of Test and T20 cricket, is inherently virtuous, noble, serious and worthwhile, while other forms are ‘dumbed down’ and worthless.

Think about this for a moment – we’re talking about someone with a bat in their hand trying to hit a little ball that someone hurls at them from a set distance away. It’s ALL inherently pointless from an existential point of view, just a bit of entertainment to distract us from our otherwise humdrum lives. Saying T20 cricket is just entertainment for the masses misses the point that that’s all any sport really is, or can ever be. Sure, we try to assign all sorts of subjective values to our sport of choice and claim any number of societal benefits if only everyone else shared our sporting tastes. That’s all fine, but please don’t argue that any of it reflects an objective, discoverable reality about which sport is inherently better or more worthwhile.

It’s interesting how quickly the anti-BBL narrative has changed in the past few days. After a disappointing first up crowd in Sydney the haters told us it was an abject failure, CA were idiots, the whole thing was a flop etc. Now after a couple of good crowds and outstanding Pay TV audiences we’re told that the whole thing is a fad that’ll only last 2-3 years and after that it’ll be doomed. And no doubt in 2-3 years time if the comp is still successful we’ll hear that the AFL and NRL have been around for over a century, 3 years is nothing, remember that the A-League struggled after a few good years etc. etc.

And so it will continue….

Mike – many thanks for taking the time to update us on the new competition, however there’s something that’s really worrying me. As you can see from the responses, you’ve managed to alienate the vast number of passionate, committed state cricket fans who simply won’t have anything to do with the BBL because of their deep commitment to their state team. What will Cricket Australia do to make up the revenue shortfall from the loss of this deeply important part of your customer base?

To help out, I’ve come up with a couple of ideas that might be useful:

1) put a collection tin in the kitchen at CA headquarters. Every time someone makes a cup of tea, they have to put in 5 cents. You should make up the shortfall by lunchtime on Christmas eve.

2) start selling chocolate bars and cans of soft drink out front of your building. Assuming no problems with the council, this should sort out the problems in a couple of hours.

3) Finally, if these other ideas are too difficult, check behind your sofa tonight for any spare change. Keep anything bigger than 50c for yourself and bring the rest into work.

This should take care of things, next year you might want to think about employee cake sales, although that will probably far exceed the revenue stream generated by our passionate but disenfranchised state fans, so might not be worth the effort.

No, general admission for the Melbourne games is $20, as I suspect it is for all the teams. And a family general admission ticket costs $40, not $75 as claimed by the author.

Not sure what it is about the BBL, but the ill-informed garbage people are writing about it is setting new standards for nonsense.

I’ve read some truly bizarre arguments on this website over the years, but the argument that the new BBL has disenfranchised a large mass of passionate state cricket fans is so utterly extraordinary that it belongs on the History Channel just after ‘Ancient Aliens episode 45’.

As someone else pointed out on another thread, the 23k who attended the Melbourne Stars is greater than the entire number of spectators who will attend every single Sheffield Shield and one-day state match at the MCG this year. In one single evening! So in other words, the ‘passion’ these fans feel for the Bushrangers is logically non existent, if it only manifests itself in one form of the game (T20). If these fans are so passionate why don’t they ever show up for the longer forms of the game, or watch on TV. The explanation that best fits the facts is that these people are in fact not state cricket fans at all (I suspect there are more Siberian Tigers wandering the wilds of Eastern Russia than there are representatives of this particular rare creature) but rather fans of the shortest form of the game.

So then ‘where are the crowds’ people ask? After all, massive numbers showed up for the interstate T20 matches, whereas the new BBL has had very disappointing crowds. Er no, in fact this is not the case. 40k most definitely did not attend a NSW Victoria game last season. This fixture, held on 22nd Jan 2011 at the MCG attracted only 17k, on the Australia Day weekend. That’s 6k FEWER than the Stars attracted to a less family friendly pre Christmas date. A year earlier on the new years day public holiday, The fixture managed 28k. Another attendance triumph by the army of passionate state cricket fans in the 2010-11 season included 13k to watch Victoria play SA at the MCG.

So there are NO masses of disenfranchised state cricket fans, there are merely disgruntled traditionalists who don’t like T20 cricket and who are dressing up their prejudices with spurious, nonsensical references to a past that simply doesn’t exist.

Am quite enjoying the cricket but have had to mute the tv to avoid the Matty and Roy show. Mate maate maaaaaatemate matey mate mate maaaaaaaaaaaate geeez maaate mate.

Perhaps we could organise an ‘Occupy movement’ whereby all the dedicated state cricket fans so horribly disenfranchised by these fake BBL teams could take possession of something appropriate for their numbers. Possibly a phone box, or my local Chinese takeaway where you have to queue out on the street if more than three people are waiting for their food at once.

Hmmm, I don’t know Mark, the fact that limiting the teams to states makes it inherently difficult to epand to an economically viable structure whereby larger population bases provide multiple teams (MEL & SYD) whilst major regional centres (Geelong, GC, Townsville, Newcastle etc.) have the opportunity further down the line to join.

Seriously, is this stuff not obvious to people?

I must admit to being fascinated that Rugby Union has identified a previously unknown political entity within the Commonwealth of Australia not mentioned in the constitution, that is “somewhere in between” a state and a territory. Ground breaking stuff.

Spot on. There’s a weird collective delusion going on here whereby the ‘established fan base of state cricket’ has been supposedly disenfranchised by the new BBL teams. That’s 15 fans across the country lost forever to the game.

‘Established fan base’. I’m starting to suspect that I’ve wandered into an alternative dimension where people actually go to watch state cricket in Australia. Seriously, what established fan base are we talking about here?

On the subject of Australian history and geography Sheek, what the hell is a province? Worse yet a ‘Mother province’. We have things called ‘states’ and if you think people struggle to identify with the Melbourne Stars, just wait until you throw ‘Northern Victoria’ at them.

Sorry, how exactly is ‘Melbourne Victory’ more serious than ‘Melbourne Stars’? Both of them seem like marketing concoctions to me and both are inherently ‘plastic’when compared with clubs or states with 100+ years of history. Sporting teams develop character, traditions and history by their deeds on the field, which allow fans to develop an emotional connection over time. Are you saying that this bond existed for Victory fans before the team had played a single game? Of course not, but over even a few years that bond develops. Criticising the BBL for not possessing this bond after a single round of matches really is absurd.

If you’re talking about the team whose name willl not be mentioned but plays in vertical black and white stripes, they still get better crowds in those years when the fans foolishly believe they have a chance of premiership glory, and worse crowds when the reality of their hopeless plight becomes clearer.

Er, Melbourne?

Oh FFS. Yeah, these teams have no chance of gaining the massive, passionate following of the attendance behemoth that is interstate cricket in Australia. I sometimes wonder what planet people are on with the criticisms being directed at the BBL. By definition any new competition is ‘manufactured’ and needs time to bed itself into the psyche of fans.

I thought I’d never say it but I’m starting to feel for A-League fans and the crap they have to suffer from NSL diehards.

“But for each team, a decline in form and fortune has inevitably led to a decline in support, crowd numbers, and revenue. The loyalty simply does not exist to keep people coming back when the side aren’t winning. ‘Thick and thin’ cannot be created synthetically.”

I was wondering, could you please identify one sporting team in Australia playing at the highest level for its sport where there isn’t a correlation between on field success and attendance. Just a single one where corwds stay the same even when the team is consistently losing.

Good luck.