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Joined August 2023
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Kicking is a beautiful skill to watch. I lament there is not more.
Rugby needs a revolution - if the game is to endure then penalties must be scrapped for all but three reasons
VFL is a hot house flower sport. The Adelaide Crows cannot find a home ground without $!00m of free tax payer money and the locals still don’t want them. God knows how much the NSW and Queenlsand ventures really cost. A journalist tried to work it out in South Australian and gave up. There is just so much subsidy for 2 teams that cannot pay for themselves. Half arsed China games fully paid for by tax payers.
The game is built on Victorian government subsidised grounds, tax breaks and (sometimes forced) community support. According to the recent sport census, they lost over half their players in Australia in recent years. Take away all this forced tax payer support and it has nothing. It’s half billion to enter an MLS team into an established sports league in America, How are VFL (or NRL) going to do anything where it has to play for itself when they cannot in Australia? There are no pokey machines in the US for NRL and no Victorian tax payers for VFL.
A code war to the death: Why must one national sports global expansion come at the expense of another?
America and Canada are offering to pay famous teams to tour. What are we waiting for?
Aussie kids can get scholarships to play at American colleges. What are we waiting for?
And of course, they could always et Twiggy to sponsor. You know, the billionaire wh loves Rigby Union so much he made his own international competition. They really hate him, don’t they.
Cash-strapped Rugby Australia sign $80m debt deal to help give game second life ahead of Lions, World Cups
Is it too late anyway. Allow me to depress with the tale of the 2 English private school games that sort of dominate Australian media.
There is something in that Australia is divided between games from Rugby Public School (Rugby Union) and Harrow Public School (Southern Australian Rules), especially as the schools regularly played each other in both games. Historically opponents played their game first half, the opposition the second. Hence two halves to a match in the whitest winter sports in Australia.
Melbourne old clubs all started as Rugby Union clubs.
But how did they diverge in Oz? World Wars mostly. Rugby players were heavy King and Country types and almost disappeared in some areas after World War 2. Those who wanted a different outcome to the war did not and took over entire regional areas.
Southern Australian Rules grew mightily when early to mid British and Irish 20th century migrants were put off by the growing Mediterranean style of football. This greatly helped move it from private schools to local parks. Melbourne Rules welcomed people where Rugby is still obsessed with silly blazers and hats.
What the eff was that hat nonsense for the World Cup departure this year?
But worse is demographics. Both games are about to drop off a demographic cliff. AFL has gone from mainstream journalists throwing around “675,000 players” until the feds ordered a census and thing changed mightily. Football destroyed all comers with 2 million registered, real, on the pitch players. Two games though, did not publicly publish their player numbers – Rugby Union and VFL.
Rugby Union forgot…somehow…to reply to those in charge of the primary source of income for all sports in Australia? Meanwhile VFL only claim 1 million participants. Lets be kind as say around 330,000 players. So really half what MSM were saying 2 years ago .
Let’s avoid their illogical attempts at member and crowd attendance numbers. Those we see in MSM are laughable. No one knows that defines them.
Professional VFL nearly died not along ago. It’s CEO on a hotel floor with a needle in his arm and its biggest star murdered a teenage girl in a drug sex binge. He would of been executed in America.
The world wide trend is less children. Nothing bad about it. We had an unexpected baby boom after WW2 because no one had that much knowledge and help to stay alive before. That has slowed now everywhere but it started slowing with us Anlgos 50 years ago. Go to a game and see how old the crowds are. Listen to who actually goes to a match and count on your fingers when they will retire.
Rugby Union might not have a demographic to save it. I have spoken to Eastern state old boys who witness their schools have reversed pitch counts to favour football. Adelaide is supposedly VFL but on the famous parklands the number of football pitches dwarfs VFL ovals. I jog over two old university grounds recently changed to football and another recently marked out of showy desperation that is clearly for show because their is little sign of boots sprigs outside the football pitches crossing it.
New chair says Aussie rugby must end 'sugar hit' approach, 'fears' for game's future if reform doesn't occur quickly
No. Target who NFL consultants turned a university game into a $9bn a year TV deal. They relentlessly market they have the biggest, strongest and fastest players of any sport. Just like Rugby Union and League here.
How?
Tackles. Rugby(s) are the only tackling games in Australia. In the 1960s a US fan who worked in films started making a half hour show a week on an NFL player, a team, college, anything each week. As his own thing. Cheap TV full of slow motion tackles andslow mo sprinting that filled the otherwise boring Sunday afternoon slot in pre internet days. Relentlessly highlighting 2 things boys, and men, ask.
Who’s toughest?
That’s it. Teenage boys are after nothing else but being tough, watching tough and talking tough. VFL does coward punches and clotheslines from behind because it does not have tackling. Some unfortunate coward punched someone lying down looking the other way and was pronounced “boxer” by the likes of Racist Eddie. I love how he first eluded proving himself, by running way to Stawell, because a month before the fight he forgot he had signed to play for an amateur remote team, in another state.
Yet later you all watched SBW knock down that Melbourne person in 9 seconds. He wasn’t even punching hard and SBW is have never been the best boxer in any Australian Rugby let alone Rugby in general. The Australian Heavyweight champion is almost always a rugby player at some point. I know of an ex player now struggling for opponents in a VFL state because he hits so hard. NFL consultants would recognise that is what boys go for.
Who’s fastest?
Just like boxing, look at the list of fastest Australian 100m runners. Almost all NSW and Queensland because Rugby(s) are the only team ball sports where sprinting is part of the game. Others let players cover 50m with a kick instead. Rugby players have to sprint that 50m while battering through opponents. The fastest active pro Rugby player officially set the 4th fastest time in Oz athletics. Our current 100m international hopeful was recruited because of his on field Rugby performances.
That is what teenage boys come like. It’s that easy but where is relentless NFL style bragging? The player bench press and 40 yard sprint times being compared like trump cards in the school yards? Concrete numbers boys can marvel and argue over on an otherwise boring bus ride to school. That is the beauty of the NFL Combine. Better for advertising than recruitment.
Did you know Taniela Tupou has to withstand 2 tonnes of weight alone in a scrum, not including the force that 2 tonnes then pushes into him? Those exerting that force easily be be in the “bench 4 and squat 5” range of “gym bros”. That he shoulder push presses more than most other gym bros can bench press? His Irish equivalent squat 800lbs.
Does anyone realise Rugby Union is the only sport that directly rewards heavy squatters outside the gym?
That is free advertising in internet Gym Bro culture. If you want cash money to pay players you need those kids. Instead we alway hear about Dermot Melbourne McCoward-Puncher pretending to be tough…
But we are dealing with RA who said Folau would play Union over League because he where else could he play in exotic place like France, while militantly banned anyone playing professionally in France from playing for the Wallabies. Imagine if Argentina or Brazil refused to allow overseas professional footballers to play World Cups?
Rugby Australia needs to target the NRL and AFL's best talent - but not on the field
Just not interested anymore. Now Rugby is rugby without the tactics and skill.
Eight crucial lessons Wallabies must learn from the RWC quarter-finalists
Do we know what is counted as attendees? We might find it hidden within the undefined word “member”.
The number of times at Coopers Stadium they announced an 11,000 crows and its looked no different to 7,000. Marquees lost to the MLS has taken its toll.
But back to watery numbers. I remember the feds demanded a player census not long ago and the notables were football with 2 million registered players, Rugby Union so pathetic it forgot and VFL refused to release numbers. Instead the next day they published “1 million participants” that counted everyone at the park.
Advertising fluff that cannot be the produced so its rubbish. My childhood team was denied a ground once by an imaginary VFL thirds team invented to prevent other sports using the ground. Good old White Australia Policy ball.
Now I jog over more and more cricket pitches that are overprinted with football pitches in winter than VFL pitches. They put some sticks over another park but the stud activity is clearly within the football pitches.
So let’s call it a one third at best. Remember the Leichhardt Oval debacle attempting to kick off Marconi with made up player numbers? All VFL claims come with a bucket of salt.
Faced with institutional challenges, the A-League may long struggle to match AFL and NRL crowds
How do you deal with a board that rejects the help of a billionaire? AFL would give Twiggy 24 hour silver service. NRL would appreciate a WA expansion. But not the RA.
Consider all “white” sports (Union, AFL) are shrinking because all white people have under replaced. Immigration is the only supporter growth avenue and NRL and football have that hand s down. AFL is at least trying. How Union lost all its SA and Pacific Islander supporters to NRL shows the insane approach of the RA.. I honestly think they sit there pretending nothing else exists, remembering old schoolboy matches.
This is the brutal reality: There are Aussies desperate to see Wallabies fail, and many want to see the sport's complete demise
A few embarrassing echoes of the hollow truth of playing Rugby in Australia. I remember O Neill bragged Folau would jump to play for the Wallabies because he can’t play in exotic places like France and England playing League* Then they banned anyone who went to France or England from play for the Wallabies. A world sport that does not understand its is a world sport. To think they used to tell us how smarter and better they were than other sports.
*We all know he could but they don’t, and don’t try to tell them. They still think it’s 1953. Typing this I am being annoyed by a stock market betting ad starring Wallabies who look like they have no idea what they are looking at. What happened to our great game.
The four players who sum up All Blacks' decline
I think Wallabies cannot play SR at all. The only money spinner is internationals and they have to get out there and make that money.
Look at its summer brother, cricket. Sheffield Shield is famous for its lack of audience and top players do not play in the local comp. Money comes from a test series and a One Day round robin series against two nations. Rugby could have a test against a European nation and then play a Pacific Island, an American and Asian. Build the game and attract migrants like Indians or Chinese.
The largest football crowd in Australia was Australia vs Greece. Reach out people.
'Good relationship': RA boss plays down Jones' betrayal, welcomes Tests against Brave Blossoms