Yep connection is hard. But as I pointed out to kiwi mate (who loves to bag the AFL for blowing money on made up new teams) that the 5 NZ Super Rugby teams were all made up to a degree. granted there was that link through from the underlying provincial unions
But for Oz the second tier is hard - club rugby leaves a lot of fans outside the city without an attachment (although league and afl seem to overcome that).. and there aren’t enough pro state teams to make a stand alone comp.
I also think one of our problems in terms of getting people interested in teams is the players themselves.
Our over-reliance on ex-private school players means that we have the fucking blandest, least interesting player base in the history of all time.
I went to Shore, and all of the guys in my year who played representative football are beige. They are "good blokes" in so far as they have never upset or differentiated themselves from the rest of the tribe of "good blokes". They're private school to a tee - they've never left the Eastern Suburbs, they wear white on Sundays, they own boat shoes and aspire to work in financial services one day, where they will continue to shrink anything that is unique to them. Getting 16-year-old-drunk into their late 20s is the closest they've ever come to having an actual personality trait.
It's a culture that's built upon conservatism and not straying from the group identity or challenging the status quo. Showing personality or setting yourself apart is frowned upon.
When have we heard anything but mindless platitudes from Hooper, Kurtley Beale, AAC (Adam Ashley-Cooper), Reece Hodge, To'omua, Slipper, Rodda etc? From the old boys union, when have Eales or Gregan or Kearns ever actually said anything funny? Or anything particularly insightful?
Can you ever imagine these blokes having the type of banter that you'd see on the Footy Show of yesteryear?
I'm not a league fan, but I'm hugely interested in Klemmer. He's a rough bloke, who is outspoken, passionate and defiantly himself. If someone takes Ponga out off the ball, there is part of me that thinks he might actually murder them, based upon the passion in his face.
He has night terrors. He literally screams in his sleep. That's interesting isn't it? I learnt it in an interview I watched with him. I wonder why he has them? I've genuinely spent time thinking about it. Can you name any similar idiosyncrasies about any of your Super teams players?
I like Lattrel Mitchell, I like Andrew Fifita, I like the Johns brothers ("it's better than lego" is hilarious and so inherently
them), I like Blake Ferguson. I hate Gallen, I hate Thurston, the list goes on.
Harry Johnson-Holmes' Instagram is the closest I've got to being genuinely interested in a Union player in a long time. He's funny as fuck.
I also think the Wallabies is bad for developing interest in players, in that the best players across the country are required to come together and be friends with one another. I'd love to have a Paul Gallen in our game. The whole of QLD hates him, and half of NSW. I want one-club players to hate other one-club players. I want animosity in games. I want tension and excitement.
I'm a massive UFC fan and half of the excitement there comes from the drama that they actively create. Watching two people fight is exciting in and of itself, but when there is a narrative behind it and a story, it's a thousand times better.
We have no narratives, we have no personalities, we have no villains, we have no heroes. We need to a better job of promoting our players and their personalities, and they need to work on actually fucking having one.