Friday’s Rugby News features a dying code in Australia, a new blue card on trial, a Force prospectus and the Shute Shield televised
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Rugby Ded
Roy Morgan, the company, not the bloke who smells cartons of Winnie blues behind Dapto Library, has come up a report that claims that rugby participation is down by 63%.
What a story to come out now. Rugby News reports the report as reporting that over a 15 year reporting period, rugby participation dropped from 148,000 regular participants (does regular participant include watching rugby on the pub?) in 2001 to 55,000 in 2016.
This external report covers the participation rates of all sports in Australia, and it also says that soccerball is the most participated sport in Australia with 623,000 players. That means in the same period soccer has grown by 46%.
Meanwhile, AFL (253,000) has fallen by 1% and Loigue (127,00) has fallen by 27%.
Unfortunately this survey didn’t cover the popularity of Foxy Boxing.
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Blue Card
The ARU is going to start trialling a ‘blue card’, Rugby News reports.
Basically, the blue card can be shown to any player showing signs of concussion, and they must leave the field until they successfully a concussion test.
While the practical need for a blue card might seem a bit confusing, ARU Chief Medical Officer Warren McDonald explained thusly:
“The Blue Card is a visual cue that a player has a suspected concussion and they will be removed from the field of play and won’t be coming back that day. It’s about recognising and removing a player that is suffering the effects of a head knock.”
This trial is set to start this weekend, with the ACT and Newcastle/Hunter competitions being the guinea pigs.
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Force Prospectus
On the same week that both the Rebels and the Brumbies have been emailing their fans to come to the game in desperate hope, the Force yesterday officially kicked off their share buying thing.
In an Australian first, the club’s #owntheforce campaign is offering the public 10,000 A Class Shares for an investment of $1,000 each via a public listed company – Western Force Owners Limited.
If you remember the old trick of adding the zeros when multiplying numbers like that, that means if successful the Force could raise $10,000,000.
The Force need to sell a minimum of 5,000 shares over the next four months for the new ownership model to go ahead.
If the Force can raise the minimum of $5 million needed, it would give them enough funds to buy back the franchise from the ARU, who took ownership last year.
“If the ARU decides the Force will be closed down, that’s $5 million to $10 million worth of new money in Australian rugby (that will be lost),” said RugbyWA Chairman Tony Howarth.
“It would be an interesting conversation as to why the ARU might not want that.”
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Shute Shield Screened
The Shute Shield will be back on TV after the Sydney Rugby Union secured most of the funding to get it on telly.
There will be one game a week broadcast, and on top of that, that game will be simulcast by Sky Sports New Zealand who will show it before the first Super game of the night.
“We can confirm we are on 7Two for the year,” SRU prez Simon Begg said.
“We’ve had lots of encouraging meetings with [production company Club Rugby TV] and we think the production and coverage this year is going to be absolutely fantastic, including a live game in Orange and the fact the game is going live into New Zealand via Sky between 5pm and 7pm.”
The SRU is in the third year of a five-year deal with Club Rugby TV, which requires it to spend $250,000 on advertising with Channel Seven in exchange for the live broadcast of one game per round on 7Two.
Last year the Australian Rugby Union came up with the money at the last minute, but in his first few months as SRU president Begg was left with little time to secure support and sponsorship after the ARU and NSW Rugby Union signalled they were not prepared to fund the deal.
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