www.news.com.au/couriermail/stor ... 89,00.html

www.news.com.au/couriermail/stor ... 89,00.html

That is actually hilarious.

RU is a dying game in Australia, hopefully the South Africans will pull out of the S14 and really destroy it!
If we can get Wellington and Perth in the NRL and continue to build up the Warriors support then RL will be truly No1 in Oceania!

agree with that

2012 when the TV rights go up a lot and we expand to central coast and perth will be that time i think

soccer has taken unions 3rd spot and the good thing about them is they help us get our grounds improved. its win win

becuase of soccer we have the following ground improvements :

1. melbourne - brand new 32,000 seat ground
2. newcastle - $30 million plus ground improvements and probably eventual 40,000 capacity

with a nth queensland team i hope DFS now gets upgraded to 35,000 - 40,000.

Sadly our ground upgrade will due to the succes of RU, soccer is still a basket case but a sleeping giant in Perth.

Well it doesnt say much for a sport that takes 3 major nations to form one league with less teams than the NRL.......

Such a boring sport and i will never understand why its so much more popular worldwide.......

Because it's played in the private schools of the ruling classes.

What a load of class warfare b*llocks.

hes right

more or less union is mostly a game for the middle / upper class whilst RL has its roots in working class areas.

And that's what has prevented league from spreading to a wider global audience is it, which was the crux of his point? If you apply that logic you would conclude that most Aussies are working class but most Kiwis are middle class given the respective interest in the two codes in those countries.

hes right on that too.

union has friends in high places to make up for a lack of a proper fan base (except nz and SA)

BS to the first paragraph.

And to the 2nd... Yeah, because that is where the money is next time the contract negotiations come around



Anyway I just took a quick count and in all 4 Sydney games friday - sunday, 74,221 people attended. If the 'tahs were that popular they would fill Homebush

How can the ARU even be thinking about expanding to a 5th team after seeing these figures. When the NRL expands and probably with even more AFL expansion they're in a heap of trouble.

Wallabies have 4 Pro teams yet are third in the world? suppose a brave bit of league poaching goes on!

Hopefully the under 20s well overtake s14 figures. Decline decline

The Under 20s TV figures were better than union's Super 14 last year as well...

It is not a case of "catching up" for the Toyota Cup.

More, a case of caught up, gone past and never to be seen again by the ARU.

Union is heading for 6th footballing spot in Australia behind gaelic and gridiron at this rate.

My friend I used to play union and most of the guys on my team were from private schools.

Like i said one team for NSW in the Super 14 getting 33,000 thats nothing to brag about.....

That was a one off.

Before that the Waratahs got one crowd under 20,000 and one just over.

I've played at three different Union clubs in Yorkshire in age groups from under nines to open age - I can't say I've played with more than two or three people in that time who were at public school. Go figure.

what hes getting at is 1 union team in nsw averaging 24,000

vs 9 sydney clubs averaging 15,000.

RIP RU.

i went to a private school.

99% of the players are from there here.

trying to argue union isnt an elitist sport is a lot like arguing union is good to watch

Its a similar story for union in the celtic league, attendances are pretty rubbish for having 3 countires in one league. I mean 3000 for a game against the current champions how woeful.

Where im from theres not really a class divide mainly because no one around here actually plays rugby league. Though there is still a very bitter attitude towards league from people who do play rugby.

It is elitist generally but here in the North there are lots of clubs made up with kid from public schools, I played with Leigh, Newton and Orrell and only played with 3-4 lads from private schools in all that time.

There are plenty of reasons why league has failed to develop internationally, one is elitism. The hostile reception that Celtic recieved when joining SL sums up 100 years of RL's geographic develoment.

they do it all the time the union mob

les cats copped a lot of grief from USAP.

and thats not forgetting getting RL banned before that,

union has trouble competing on the field so resorts to cheating

Manchester Utd get a crowd over 70k everytime they play - Manchester has a population of approx 1m - for Sydney RL to get only 74k for 4 games from a population of 4m? for Sydney's top sport is pathetic tbh

Union is a game to be played not watched - it internationals are major corporate and social events watched by people who are often there for the occasion rather than interest in the game as such - cricket is much the same - corporate spend at these two events dwarfs even soccer in spend per head.

Union has a vibrant international scene because of 6 nations in Europe and 3 in the southern hemisphere - RL has basically 4 nations of which two are totally dominant.

League will never compete internationally with union it needs work on its strengths which is the club game.