why pack the home stadium with 35000 when you can half fill anz?
an educated man would see the advantage in publicity/marketing of having a packed sfs for a couple of games a year... i doubt there are many of them at tahs management.
ohhh but then theres the feeble excuse of looking after the western suburbs fans...
imbeciles- better to pack a small stadium than have an empty large stadium> it boggles the mind as to why they dont understand these simple things
Jay-c: Never be guilty of underestimating the strategic incompetence of many of the bodies governing Aus rugby. People inexperienced in corporate politics and business often suppose that allegedly glamourous track records and fancy titles like CEO actually mean they know precisely what they are doing, but this is manifestly so often not the case in Australian rugby. Even the most cursory examination of the financial status of most of the State RU franchises, coupled with their systematically declining crowd figures, reveals this appalling truth within minutes of reading. This is all about generally poor Board calibre, weak management, and inadequate coaching depth, it has nothing to do with 'external' or 'we lack depth of player numbers' factors, these faux explanations are just the excuses-riddled product of skilfully deflecting PR machines at work, and a reflection of the sad decline of our expectations of true excellence in rugby code development and management in Australia.
Your observations above are apt. What possible good does that short-term gain of NSW Govt inducements for ANZ do anybody in terms of fan support and code health within NSW? A 20-30% full ANZ is a lonely and sad place to experience virtually any sport, let alone one played on a rectangular field. The sole exception would be if it was credibly likely that the SFS would be a sure sell-out and fan demand would be unfulfilled, but is that likely this weekend, was it ever likely?
Actually, as a rugby-crowds-figures-watcher as I am in Aus rugby, I do think the final crowd figures this weekend at ANZ will be of high strategic importance for the NSWRU (unless the weather is unusually poor). We all know the trend line for Tahs games this year - declining to highly (financially) dangerous levels around the 13,000-ish mark. Not only is this dangerous for game $ income, a key part of the Tahs' total income, but gate figures (along with TV viewership) slowly but surely drive total $ sponsorship levels, both in absolute numbers of sponsors interested, and what they will pay for rights. Sponsorship $s are, broadly, the biggest $ contributor to most Aus State RUs.
This weekend should be a blockbuster for Tahs' fans: the old bitter rivals the Brumbies determined to show they're no longer a dying breed, a simply crucial Tahs game for the final 6 in the S15, maybe the last Tahs game of the year, and the Tahs have restarted playing very skilful, fan-friendly rugby with KB (Kurtley Beale) on fire, etc. How good is this? Now, I would say that, assuming OK weather, for this genuinely exciting, special end-of-season match, any crowd at ANZ less than 25,000+ for this key match is a sign that Tahs' attendance levels in 2011 may have reached a negative 'tipping point' from which they may not easily recover in 2012 despite, say, a new coach and no more dull, kickathon games in 2012 (here's hoping). A sports crowd tipping point in the negative is when a large body of reasonably consistent fans - say between 7,000 and 20,000 - on a gradual leakage or quite sudden basis make a core decision simply to come to no more to Tahs games (or maybe too, any rugby games), namely they 'resign' and just walk away from that kind of team-love. Yes, they may still watch on TV, but history in sports tends to show TV viewership correlates somewhat with actual game attendance levels. If such a tipping point is reached in 2011, and there is no major change in the formula of management and playing product that has led to it, then I will predict now the Waratahs and/or NSWRU will have serious business and financial problems in late 2012 and into 2013.
I say the above with no pleasure whatever: I am a passionate fan of the game, and I most sincerely want to see the Tahs as something consistently great, in terms of team achievement and ongoing financial viability, as a simultaneously healthy NSWRU, QRU and ACTRU are absolutely essential for a strategically viable and successful rugby capability in Australia, period.
