Loosehead Greg's Roar Profile

Did you know Fiji, Samoa, Tonga, Canada and Argentina played alongside teams from Australia, New Zealand and South Africa in the amateur-era rugby union…

Rugby

2020

SANZAAR’s contempt for the second tier bites them back

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

SANZAAR’s contempt for the second tier bites them back

Rugby

2020

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Rugby union's TV problem isn't viewers - it's the viewing

Television coverage of rugby is a billion dollar industry yet the game is suffering from poor television coverage. Why do I say that? It’s…

Rugby

2016

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Rugby union's TV problem isn't viewers - it's the viewing

Rugby

2016

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

What are the chances of an all-Australian Super Rugby grand final?

The 2015 Super Rugby final in Wellington sold out in one minute. One minute. Fans love a winner-takes-all match as the historical success of…

Rugby

2015

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

What are the chances of an all-Australian Super Rugby grand final?

Rugby

2015

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Is it too late for a Super Rugby champions concept?

As a rugby fan, my attention is spread across internationals, domestic and club tournaments as well as Super Rugby. Less frequently do I feel…

Rugby

2014

Loosehead Greg

Roar Rookie

Is it too late for a Super Rugby champions concept?

Rugby

2014

It is a valid comparison because both tournaments proposed their finals would be appealing Australian TV audiences and great business for Nine.

Let’s remove our bias – things what we want to see – and look at the cold hard numbers. What do they tell us?

This is urgent information because RA had stated a 2022 plan to increase commitment to TT, and potentially do away with AU completely. Although, I must acknowledge, the messaging has improved in recent weeks as the dismal failure of 2021 TT with Australian audiences would have become apparent to everybody, including the broadcaster.

There should be no hiding from the facts.

View Comment

I’m working with all information I have. I do not have a breakdown of Australian viewer numbers game by game, and I hope they are made public for our consideration. If anyone can share a link to the data I would love to look at it.

The other piece of information I do have is this –

“The 2021 Harvey Norman Super Rugby AU season has recorded average domestic television ratings up an average of 144% across the regular season year-on-year.

The ratings do not include the numbers for the Stan Sport platform, and come ahead of the Finals series, culminating in the Final on Saturday 8 May at Suncorp Stadium.”

https://ministryofsport.com.au/2021-super-rugby-au-season-records-144-broadcast-ratings-increase/

“For those who want to shotgun my argument to catastrophe like not playing New Zealand at all, that’s not what I’m saying.”

Yet, John Brown says, if Australia commits to a national rugby championship it will be a catastrophe!

Yeah, nah. It will not. It’ll be great.

Thanks mate.

Great points Peter.

I think you’re right JamesD the expat kiwis boost the numbers for those games.

So what do we need to do to get more Australians turning up?

I know! Keep developing national tournaments like AU and/or NRC.

I agree with every point you make Puff, except for the conclusion. NZ doesn’t have to be a “big part” of the solution. They’ll be in the mix, sure, but we’ve leaned on the kiwis too much already.

We must grow our sport in Australia: and one way to do that is with an inspiring national competition like Super Rugby AU.

Yep. I think it’s only expat kiwis who object to us taking control of our own rugby destiny.

The sixth team should be either

a) Fijian Drua

b) Presidents XV based in Western Sydney and/or NSW Country.

Yep. We’ve been playing NZ in Super Rugby for 25 years and slowly getting worse results.

What do they call it when you do the same thing over and over and expect a different result?

Brett, when you cherry pick numbers to support your own argument you are being non-scientific.

Bad!

Irrelevant.

You should not remove the outlier event Brett else you invalidate your findings.

Hi Brett, we don’t have the full numbers for every game yet. I hope they are publicly released.

Knowing a bit about statistics, yes the AU final was an outlier, but that’s what we statisticians are looking for. The upside outliers are stuffed with money.

AU can guarantee games with massive audiences. That’s proven now.

TT probably also can, if an AU teams makes the finals, but it can not do that as regularly as AU.

Thus, we move from statistics to probability.

Q: Which tournament offers the most potential for consistent super linear outlier events?

A: AU

Exactly.

What utter nonsense JD.

NZ’s population is smaller than Melbourne and your economy is smaller than NSW.

There is a 25 million person potential TV audience in Australia which RA can grow into be delivering what Australians want to watch – a national rugby competition.

Hello Bluesfan, let me just copy and paste a line from my article, because clearly you either haven’t read it, or didn’t understand it.

“For those who want to shotgun my argument to catastrophes like not playing New Zealand at all, that’s not what I’m saying.”

That’s very well though through Ken’s other leg. A lot of details there. Good ideas. This is a profound observation –

“we may need to confine our planning projections to 12 month periods.”

Exactly! RA shouldn’t make decisions that bind us to any scenario for a decade. RA should be more agile and iterative. Based on what happened this year, what nudges would improve things?

1) Introduce an NRC
2) Include a 6th team in AU (Drua, Presidents XV or whomever)
3) Add two semi-finals to AU
4) Completely revisit TT: invite Japan and make it a 16 team knock out tournament hosted in 1 country.

Etc.

Yes. I agree. RA should do all that via AU or NRC competitions, or both.

I’m a data driven amateur analyst. I’m hopeful that Nine / Stan will release the full Australian audience numbers for every game of AU and TT publicly so we can know for sure.

My instinct though, is if you drew a line chart for each tournament’s audience figures for comparison…

AU would start low and slowly build up each week before spiking in the final.

TT would start high in round 1, still be relatively high in round 2, and then drop away the longer the tournament went on.

I also predict, if you play more of each, the trend lines will continue in the same directions.

Melbourne has 5 million population. That’s more than all of NZ, let alone one of their franchises.

I would like to see how many TV viewers Nine would get if the Melbourne Rebels made the finals against any of their traditional AFL rivals eg WA Force.

That’s exactly the sort of question RA and Nine should be asking.

I appreciate the effort and consideration you have given this, but I think that’s way too complex for the casual sports fan.

Rugby union is complicated enough on the field.

Keep the tournament formats simple.

2 or 3 games of AOT plus 3 games of AU each weekend is the same as 5 games of SRTT. Same same.

I’m not arguing to get rid of TT either. I’m asking RA to firm up a commitment to AU or NRC.

Yep. I think the quality of rugby has been pretty good actually, across all this year’s tournaments. I have enjoyed watching it all, even the Tahs have scored some great tries.

Players and fans deserve better tournaments though.

Over the years administrators have made a string of bad decisions about competition formats. And as a result, we’re still arguing about the best SR format 25 years after inception in 1996!

Fortunately, the pandemic has snapped the administrators out of their coma. We’ve seen the potential of AU. Let’s hope the administrators seize on that, and grow it over time, and keep other competitions short and sweet.

What the Australian teams can learn from the Blues and Highlanders

It’s true the Australian style of play isn’t fully developed. But then, we’ve only had two seasons of AU to nurture it, while the kiwis have had their NPC since 1976.

An Australian style will become clearer the longer AU / NRC is played. Hopefully we’ll see regional styles emerge too, as they have in NZ to some degree, with the South Island teams the most exciting to watch.

Newer Comments Older Comments