Uni vs Wicks

[farva]

In terms of the crowd support, I dont think dropping from 25k to 5k is a huge issue.
The Shute Shield is nowhere near the top of Australian rugby. Comparing it to the AFL or NRL GFs are ludicrous. If you want to compare apples with apples, look to the Bledisloe Cup match.
A parrallel Ill draw is to the SANFL grand final here in Adelaide (even that isnt a true reflection as it is second tier not 3rd tier like the Shute Shield).
Before the Crows and Power came into the AFL, the SANFL grand final used to get huge crowds. There are records of over 100k packing into Football Park in the 60s. It was the peak of Aussie Rules in this state. Then the Crows and Power came on the scene, and crowds for the SANFL fell. Often less than 1000 came to games. I think the final only draws at most 10k. Aussie Rules in SA is as strong as ever. It dominates the media and participation. No-one is suggesting that because the SANFL GF isnt getting 100k anymore means that the game is dying here. Why are we asking the same question for rugby?

 

[topo]

The crowds were much bigger at the SFS a few years ago, but they have gradually dropped away. I am pretty sure the best part of 15,000 were there in 1999 when the Woodies won their first first grade premiership. The best moment was when schoolboy sensation Phil Waugh (sic) dropped the ball with the line wide open. Then the Woodies scored a match-winning try from a forward pass.


They don't make 'em like that any more.

I still haven't forgiven George Ayoub for that game.

 

[RugbyReg]

yeah I can understand the irrelevance of comparing the GF to the NRL GF, but then again the game had, what, close to a half a dozen Wallabies playing (let me work that out, Hux, BB, Burgo, Mccalman, Mumm, Beale, Kepu) and perhaps another dozen regular Super starters (Inman, Carter, Mowen, Phibbs, Valentine) so it is still disappointing and a sign of how rugby as a 'brand' has probably lost touch with the general punter.

 

[DPK]

I still haven't forgiven George Ayoub for that game.

What about Phil?

 

[#1 Tah]

yeah I can understand the irrelevance of comparing the GF to the NRL GF, but then again the game had, what, close to a half a dozen Wallabies playing (let me work that out, Hux, BB, Burgo, Mccalman, Mumm, Beale, Kepu) and perhaps another dozen regular Super starters (Inman, Carter, Mowen, Phibbs, Valentine) so it is still disappointing and a sign of how rugby as a 'brand' has probably lost touch with the general punter.

I rekkon we would have had 15k if we were at the SFS, it was a sunny day and the AFL rematch wasnt on.

 

[Gnostic]

Meant to mention it earlier but got side tracked by my angst at Dickenson.

George Ayoub continues to turn out at nearly every game as TMO. I know he's a pro/semi pro ref but the man has been dedicated to Rugby for a long long time. He deserves many thanks and recognition for his enormous contribution to Oz Rugby, especially the Sydney Comp.

 

[Eyes and Ears]

George Ayoub continues to turn out at nearly every game as TMO. I know he's a pro/semi pro ref but the man has been dedicated to Rugby for a long long time. He deserves many thanks and recognition for his enormous contribution to Oz Rugby, especially the Sydney Comp.

George has not been a pro / semi-pro referee for many years. He does get paid for his TMO work at the elite level but it is a modest amount. He is in FT employment at Joeys currently. I totally agree that George deserves this recognition as do many other referees who have refereed 100s of games for basically the love of the game.

 

[sjg]

Fast and furious, a league apart
PAUL SHEEHAN
October 4, 2010
On Thursday I received a text from a lawyer friend: ''Number of NRL players to be banned for match-fixing. Player agent also involved. Action is being delayed. Is News Ltd making sure story doesn't break yet so it doesn't suck oxygen from grand final?''

News Ltd would regard this as an outrageous question. But the question was raised because News Ltd has a lot of influence with the National Rugby League, and has displayed little interest in this story.

In 17 pages of coverage of the 2010 rugby league grand final in its two Sydney-based newspapers on Saturday, News did not have the story that the Herald splashed on its front page over the weekend, about a betting plunge involving the alleged manipulation of an NRL game.

The NRL and the NSW police have amassed a mountain of detail about a betting plunge on an NRL match on August 21 involving the accident-prone Canterbury Bulldogs and the North Queensland Cowboys. The Herald named several people, including an NRL player and a former player, who had come to the attention of the investigation.

This strikes at the core of the game's integrity. It is also a big story - unless you work at News Ltd, the same company that owns last year's premiers, the Melbourne Storm, who were exposed as having engaged in systematic cheating. Not that News Ltd management knew anything about this. News merely owns the team.

This is another example of the bipolar nature of rugby league. On one side, the product it puts on the field and on TV screens is brilliant. The game has evolved into the most exciting and telegenic of the four major football codes in Australia. It is a 21st-century spectacle. It needed to be.

The favourite game among young males, by far, is video games. They are fast, furious, interactive and usually brutal. These games have changed the attention spans of young people, and football needs to adapt to the tempo of the video age. The NRL has adapted, becoming more manic, and is now the most-watched sport on Australian TV.

Then there is the other face of the NRL; the endless parade of thuggish incidents on and off the field, and alcohol-fuelled stupidity by NRL players. Four players in yesterday's grand final made headlines for all the wrong reasons in 2009.

Australia is unique among major sporting markets in having four football codes competing for market share. The irony is that the two international games, football (soccer) and rugby union, are getting trounced by the two parochial codes, rugby league and Australian Rules, which are both fast and furious, and both built on deep tribal roots.

Rugby union, in the context of the video age (as distinct from its own rich tradition), is a rubbish product. It is a 19th century game in a 21st century marketplace.

The Australian Rugby Union has also cooked the golden goose. Whoever decided it was a good idea to flog the national team, the Wallabies, by playing four Tests a year against the All Blacks and another three Tests a year against the Springboks needs to go. The mystique of these once iconic rivalries has been eroded by over-exposure.

Saturday was the big day for the rugby's Sydney competition, the prime nursery of elite rugby, but the season ended with a poor crowd - 5400 - at a grim and largely empty venue, Concord Oval, on a wet day, as Sydney University won its sixth consecutive premiership with a 46-6 thumping of Randwick.

Typically, the game was marred by 23 penalties and 38 turnovers.

Rugby is a game about punishment. It is excessively complex and ambiguous. The soaring fluidity and sweeping movements that the game can produce are buried beneath a pedantic structure that crushes continuity and public interest. The crowd figures and TV ratings do not lie.

What stands between rugby and permanent irrelevance is the 2011 Rugby World Cup in New Zealand. Australia has a good coach, a good draw, and a good team that can beat anyone on its day, so it is not far-fetched to regard the 2011 World Cup as winnable. But a poor World Cup will exacerbate the game's decline.

At least rugby is not facing the possibility that its entire top tier will collapse. That is ominously possible for the A league, the showcase of football, or soccer, in this country.

I am a keen follower of football, but while I watch the English Premier League on TV, I would not cross the road to watch an A league game. Most people agree with me. The crowd figures and TV ratings say so.

Therein lies the challenge for football in Australia. Our best young players, like most of the fans, have their eyes on the glittering big leagues on Europe. The A League also suffers by being built from a business plan, not the organic, incremental growth of the tribal loyalties on which the AFL and NFL juggernauts are built.

Even the biggest tribes and biggest brands in global football are floating on a sea of red ink. The 20 English Premier League clubs have a combined debt of $4.6 billion. It's the same in Spain and Italy. The business model of Europe is debt and dynasty, with a handful of mega-clubs sharing the championships while the rest of the clubs make up the numbers.

Australia has chosen the American model (ironically, the socialist model) of salary caps and player drafts. The NRL and AFL can each expect billion-dollar contracts when their TV deals come for renewal.

Rugby union and the A League, unless they adapt to the era of attention deficit disorder, can expect the leftovers.

wall of text, sorry guys. but an interesting article on the smh that sort of follows the discussion on this thread. Sheehan raises valid and interesting points, the adapting nature of sport and such. he obviously doesnt appreciate the 3N as one of the premier competitions in rugby, and yet again makes the fools comparision of shute against national comps. the frankly shit condition of the fields in the finals series has been highlighted, and is an issue that should be addressed by nswru. he states that 38 turnovers is a negative, i personally believe (if the stat isnt lopsided) a high rate of turnovers is a mark of a highly competitive game with good work from loose forwards. thoughts?

 

[wamberal]

My thoughts are not to take anything this man writes too seriously. A year or two ago he was writing pieces about the NRL's stinking public image. It is pretty obvious that he will take any position that suits the moment, just to fill a column.

Perhaps the NSWRU should consider changing the format of the Shute Shield. As things stand, the only way from here is down.

One possibility would be to give the Shield to the minor premiers, and then mount a four, five, or six team finals series with the leaders of the Brisbane and ACT competitions.

 

[Moses]

I just had to scan this page out of the match program...

 

[RugbyReg]

Moses, will your profile pic come out as 3-D if I wear blue and red glasses?

 

[Gnostic]

At the alleged height of the Shute Shield when we were playing the finals at the SFS Randwick won 6 on the trot. I don't recall the rancor about Randwicks dominance of the comp then or the fact that so many of the Wallabies were from that side. Yes it was the overlap between the the pro and amateur eras.

I think there is a massive conflict of interest in what News prints/broadcasts about the NRL. The amount of coverage the competition gets from NRL owned/affilated publishers and broadcasters simply because it has such a large investment in the game and for so long has had a controlling hand as well. I still find it impossible to believe that News had no knowledge of the Storm debacle and likewise have no trouble at all in believing that they are managing the publicity over the betting issue. It makes simple business sense really.

The article makes the assertion about Rugby being a rubbish product, I contend that the continual publishing of comment like this and the mass assault of pro-League articles (which border on properganda when combined with the anti-rugby comment) acts to sway the ill-educated regarding Rugby. If you have a potential fan who reads/sees 10 articles proclaiming the superiority of League and nothing in support of Rugby what else is that potential fan to think. The fact there is little critical examination of the games and even less informed comment on the reason for rulings and outcomes in the main stream media (away from sites like this) means that to new and potential fans the complex game of Rugby is difficult to understand and follow so they opt for easy and simple.

 

[DPK]

There were 24 penalties in the NRL grand final, according to NRL.com.

 

[Gnostic]

There were 24 penalties in the NRL grand final, according to NRL.com.

If they are given the appropriate media coverage that will be portrayed as a good thing. Just as it would be portrayed as a negative for Rugby.

 

[Jnor]

agree, Gnostic, and I think the article is a piece of rubbish wheeled out to fill column inches post-gf. Especially the point about turnovers being somehow abhorrent, wtf? I don't know how to get our game a bigger following but I certainly don't think that dumbing it down for the 'ADD generation' is the right answer. Lowest common denominator thinking is a bane on society.

Although it was in SMH, so it's Faifax, not News.

 

[DPK]

If I could refocus the conversation onto a tactical part of the game; Barnes has a habit of kicking drop goals to end advantage played by the referee. I think this is a tactic that works very well at the higher levels of the game. It's also another reason I think Barnes should be playing as the Wallaby 12 rather than Giteau. I think he is tactically a better 10/12 when he's playing well.

 

[Lee Grant]

The irony is that the two international games, football (soccer) and rugby union, are getting trounced by the two parochial codes, rugby league and Australian Rules, which are both fast and furious, and both built on deep tribal roots.

Unfortunately this is true. My two boys both played rugby union from the age of 6 and went to schools that played union and not league, including Joeys at high school. They never played a game of league.

They would also sit with me whilst I watched the Dragons play league on TV and come with me to watch Dragon games at the ground, and State Of Origin. I'd watch games of union and go to union games also but they weren't interested, except to watch the Wallabies a few times on TV.

Yesterday I went to see the Dragons win the NRL Grand Final with my younger son. The last time we had gone to watch the Dragons in a Grand Final was in 1999 when he was 13 years old. He was distraught at the result and was lying down on the footpath outside the stadium crying whilst people stepped over him grinning with empathy. [He was in a better frame of mind yesterday.]

The point is that the game of rugby league has the power to interest people like that and rugby union doesn't, except to a minority.

I don't know what it is. I've been following the Dragons for 50 years but it's more the team that I'm interested in, not the game of rugby league. I find it hard to watch a whole game sometimes with its paint by numbers play and you keep thinking there is something missing. Well there is: after a while you keep wanting to see a lineout or a real scrum and players contesting for the ball.

What is it about league that can arouse the passions of Sydney people but union can't; yet in places like Clermont and Limerick there is a tribal passion for rugby union as fierce as anything here for rugby league?

Perhaps it is the exclusivity of the union game in Australia in that the general demographic of the audience is middle and upper class, and they don't do tribal. But it is much the same in Ireland where GAA is the "game of the people", yet Thomond78 and his mates feel about their Munster rugby union team, and show it, as strongly as Dragon fans do for their rugby league team here.

 

[Hugh Jarse]

agree, Gnostic, and I think the article is a piece of rubbish wheeled out to fill column inches post-gf. Especially the point about turnovers being somehow abhorrent, wtf? I don't know how to get our game a bigger following but I certainly don't think that dumbing it down for the 'ADD generation' is the right answer. Lowest common denominator thinking is a bane on society.

Although it was in SMH, so it's Faifax, not News.

We have a "Made for TV" ADD generation game in 7's. WE need to promote this to get our new converts hooked.

Enterprising emerging nations like the Kenyans have shown that you do not need to one of the top 10 XV aside nations (Aust, NZ, SAF, Eng, Sco, Ire, Wales, France, Italy, Arg,) to play and win. Look at success of FIJI, Samoa, Tonga on 7's tournaments as well. Heaven help us all if the Septics ever get genuinely serious about 7's.

 

[Gnostic]

I have said for a while that the 7s making the Olympics will be a huge opportunity for Rugby. The only coverage that many of the other sports like Cycling (sorry cyclo etc.) gets in Oz is during the Olympics. We can use that massive exposure to educate a few that Rugby 15s is a great truly international game. We can see some real growth in the game then from the grass roots level up.

 

[ChargerWA]

If we have to dumb rugby down to appeal to the masses, I would prefer it remains in partial obscurity. Rugby for as physical as it is in nature, is a game of subtle nuances that take time to learn to appreciate. Rugby needs to sell it's self on the amount of contested possession a game contains. As more ball sports trend towards containing less and less contested possession, this could be our point of difference.