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Sadly all the big stadiums (stadia? I'll check with the Fuse) in Australia were built or planned before "boutique" type stadiums became popular for baseball in the US. Those teams needs to attract fans for ~80 home games a year, each 3-4 boring hours long, so now they've hit on the idea of...

Preaching to the choir there Ali. But as pointed out previously, no-one holds the board and senior management to account - other than the fans.

Don't forget before Link came along the Tahs hadn't beaten Qld for years, and I think had never beaten ACT in Canberra, despite often beating these teams in final table positions. That was a definite weakness that Link dealt with. From an outsider's perspective, it has to be the board-level...

On the assumption that a fair proportion of the crowd has come to watch rugby, I favour more rugby as the warm-up for the main show. I know the argument against having curtain-raisers has been the need to clear the arena for 60-90 min before kick-off, but surely at the SFS teams can do most of...

Yeah. Good, constructive response there, Stands. No, I'm no relation to Tah man, whoever he may be...I assume they had to exile the previous Tah Man after he was unmasked on Fox Sports a while ago. Have you ever been to the rugby with kids? I took my son to a trial game against the Brumbies...

Hey - hands off Tah Man. He rocks. I don't think cheerleaders are the answer to pulling in the crowds to the SFS. Many spectators are more interested in what happens after kick-off.

Agree TBH, and building a team culture was a key part of why Macqueen was hired. I think a key part of the recent popularity of the Swans in Sydney has been their super-clean, team-first image, which makes them very attractive to families - they're appreciated by mums. The Rebels no doubt want...

Or option (c), preparing for the post-Burgess era?

ITS, are you resting Burgess or dropping him? And I only saw moments of the Shute Shield match on TV on Saturday, how did BKH go?

Nailed it Bruce, I was thinking that myself when I read it, again, this morning. I'm wondering if we need a "Growden/R&M whinge thread", where we can all go to occasionally vent about the Chief Rugby Correspondent of the SMH and avoid having that vitriol infect other threads. Kind of like the...

Hmmm, the comparison to NCAA football gives me the creeps, as I mentioned earlier. Trying to link sporting (or other) scholarships to academic results or other parameters across schools would be fraught with red tape and more temptation to bend rules to keep the talent.

Yes, I don’t think developing the game in western Sydney was high on the list of reasons the ARU took this deal…or even entered anyone’s head. But, whilst we’ll never know the specifics of the deal offered by the NSW government/ANZ stadium, compared to what Brisbane or Melbourne might have...

I don’t see what all the whinging is about. The ARU has likely taken a good offer to keep a game in Sydney that it wouldn’t have wanted to move anyway. We’d all like more money spent on grass-roots rugby, another tier of competition, and so on – where is that money going to come from? I’d love...

If you're basing it on gun calibre, you'd have to put a bit on the Camels then...

I fail to see how this team salary cap would be significantly different to current individual salary cap that the S15 teams work under – aren’t they limited to a maximum $110K or so salary per player, with ARU topups for prospective Wallabies? Indeed, if the Force lose JOC (James O'Connor), and Sharpey gets...

Fair enough Bruce - although Parramatta at one stage were talking about taking games to Castle Hill, just down the road from Hillsong. I thought maybe Gloria Jeans was the Woodies' new sponsor or something.

Huh? Obviously I'm out of the loop here - what's the connection between Hillsong and Eastwood?

Canadian Rugby – I think the basis of people’s irritation with the concept of sporting scholarships goes back to one of the fundamentals that these schools all support – the idea that they should be helping to develop “well-rounded” young men, not just guys who can do well in the classroom...

If it's anything like the research I read a long time ago about shinguards in soccer, headgear is probably quite effective in stopping damage from high-velocity, low energy impacts (eg some head-clashes, stray elbow or forearm without much bodyweight behind it), but not much use against...

Absolutely - you can't have a game of social touch without an argument about the rules first. In my experience, the game that has tap-on-foot, no dummy-half, and kicking (must catch kick on full) is called "tip footy", whereas the game with dummy-half, roll-under-foot and no kicking is...