If there is a word guaranteed to rile rugby purists, it is “product”. Rugby is a sport, they say, a way of life, a tradition. It is a game played by hard men to win glory, not by marketers to win a quick buck.
But without marketers, where would we be? In the words of astronaut Gus Grisham: no bucks, no Buck Rogers. Without bums on seats there would be no wages for professional players, and no money for the grass roots. In this new age of professional sports, rugby would die.
So, how are we doing?
We know how the Wallabies are doing on the field. B-minus would be a charitable assessment. Some might give us a C or even a D. In terms of trophies it’s a mess, although things are looking up. But the silverware cupboard is almost bare.
How have these negative performance factors affected attendances? There is a view on the street that crowd numbers are seriously down. Is this true, and if so, why? What follows is an analysis of Wallaby crowd numbers by coach, starting with Bob Dwyer, taking into account their preferred style of play and their level of success.
Let’s start with win percentages, courtesy of the G&GR Wiki:
| Bob Dwyer | 64% |
| Alan Jones | 70% |
| Greg Smith | 63% |
| Rod MacQueen | 79% |
| Eddie Jones | 58% |
| John Connolly | 64% |
| Robbie Deans | 54% |
Now let’s categorise each coach’s preferred style of rugby. Let’s keep it simple and define just three types: field position, structured and ball in hand. Here is how I believe they stack up (though I accept this is an inexact science, and that there are valid arguments to be had about each of these calls):
| Bob Dwyer | Ball in hand |
| Alan Jones | Ball in hand |
| Greg Smith | Ball in hand |
| Rod MacQueen | Structured |
| Eddie Jones | Structured |
| John Connolly | Field Position |
| Robbie Deans | Ball in hand |
Finally, we have each coach’s average Australian crowd, courtesy of the statistics archives at Scrum.com. I’ve used home crowds since it is Australian bums on Australian seats that we’re interested in:
| Bob Dwyer | 28,953 |
| Alan Jones | 17,549 |
| Greg Smith | 37,577 |
| Rod MacQueen | 46,574 |
| Eddie Jones | 54,619 |
| John Connolly | 51,110 |
| Robbie Deans | 46,071 |
Now for the fun part, the pictures! This first graph simply shows the average crowd by year since 1982, to give us an idea of the trend:
It shows a clear pattern. Crowd numbers have increased steadily throughout the professional era, peaking around the 2003 RWC. Since 2004 the numbers seem to have been under some strain, but if we look at the percentage drop after earlier peaks, this is to be expected. In fact, the drop after 2003 has a similar shape to the drop after 1991. So what we have here is an upward trend with some regular short term ebb and flow.
The next graph correlates attendances with each coach:
What can we deduce from this? Not much. There is no way to be sure whether the rise and fall in numbers we saw in the first graph is a result of some kind of natural cycle, or whether it was due to the coach, or a combination of the two.
Perhaps the next graph will help us out. If correlates attendance with playing style:
Well, now there is a myth potentially debunked! At best there seems to be no correlation between playing style and bums on seats! At worst, it might even be argued that ball in hand is the least favoured style when it comes to punters parting with their hard-earned cash.
Of course it is not quite as simple as that. Bob Dwyer coached the Wallabies for long periods (at 39 games our most prolific coach) during the time of the lowest crowds. This was not because he was an unpopular coach, or because the Wallabies were playing an unpopular style, but because those game were played in the most distant past and the trend has been inexorably up. Taking into account that trend, I think that the best we can say is that there is no obvious relationship between playing style and crowd numbers.
What of that other widely held belief about Australian supporters, that we are fair-weather fans, who only go to see a winning team? This graph correlates crowd numbers with the success rate of coaches. Attendances are shown in green, compared with the coach’s win percentages in gold.
But, where is the pattern? Once more, the pattern is that there is no pattern.
Here is what the cold hard numbers say:
That the style of rugby we play, and the amount we win, has no effect at all on the willingness of rugby fans to pay big bucks to watch the Wallabies play.
In fact, the only reliable determinant of crowd numbers seems to be major events such as RWC years and Lions tours.
Which leads me to predict that next year we will see the cycle reassert itself, and home crowds will go up, off the back of a Wallabies RWC win, and will then reach new highs in 2013 when the Lions visit Australia.
How do you like them apples?
For our parting statistical shot, let’s have a quick look at the total number of spectators by coach. This graph naturally favours the more long-lasting coaches, but it is interesting to see the total commercial value that each coach has created for the ARU:
Take a bow, Eddie Jones. One and a half million paying customers in just four years!
