For the past 9-10 months I have been living without foxtel (they can't get it to work in our building for some reason). I have also been living in a notoriously league town.
People in the traditional rugby circles may discuss how rugby locked away on pay TV affects wider interest, and may wax lyrical about the need to broaden the audience, but they don't truly understand the problem. The problem is this: the general public are not conscious of this game. Some of you will no doubt be reading this thinking "Oh we already know this", but to experience it as I have is unbelievable. If you follow rugby closely (as you all obviously do), you are probably immune to what the situation actually is.
Without foxtel, there is definately a void in my "rugby" life.
I don't know how to properly describe it, but I will try:
Of course the people in my town know of rugby. They know of the reds and they know of the wallabies, and they know that it is played at the same time of year as league.
But they know these things in exactly the same way as they know the name of the kid that sat three chairs behind them in grade 2. Only once the name is mentioned is it remembered. The mention of the game elicits a micro-stare as their neuron's fire in the deepest recesses of their brains searching for that longest of memories, followed by a realisation that the game exists.
I could not have imagined this as I had had foxtel from the start, traversed in somewhat rugby circles and always read rugby news. There are vast swathes of people that do not have foxtel and therefore rugby (for them) exists in some weird extension of the heisenberg uncertainty principle.
The herald sun's article shows precisely the awareness that the general public have for rugby in this country:
"including LIVE coverage of AFL, NRL, NBA, NFL, A-League, Supercars, Formula 1, the best of European football and more"
The game does not even register. Their is no malice in the omission of the game in the advertisement. No undercurrent of feigned ignorance coming out of a non rugby state. The person writing that piece does not even register the game exists. If any of you pointed out that Super Rugby was omitted, the person who wrote it would afford you the same micro stare, followed by an embarrassed laugh and an acknowledgement that "they had forgotten about that one". A minute later, the game would be completely out of their consciousness again - their mind slightly uneasy about having made a minor error about something recently, but not really worrying too much about it as it is probably unimportant.
TLDR: I don't have foxtel and I miss rugby.