Following up: Ten of the largest 15 cities in the country are RL through and through, and one of the remaining five (Albury) is 50/50 RL and AFL. Interestingly none of them have RU as the top sport... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ci ... population

Following up: Ten of the largest 15 cities in the country are RL through and through, and one of the remaining five (Albury) is 50/50 RL and AFL. Interestingly none of them have RU as the top sport... en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ci ... population

Do they still play RU here?

I know where Auckland is Loks....I was just highlighting that outside Sydney and Brisbane, RL isn't the massive game some paint it to be on here.
As for Union....don't believE all the bad press I get...I have no love of the game, but I do admire the way it is administrated and run........whilst the NRL and some of the more rabid elements who support it, will tell you that the new Billion dollar TV deal will be a game changer, you should temper it with exactly wht is beng sold here.....
201 live NRL games a season
60+ Toyota Cup games a season
3 SoO Games a season
2 Internationals (minimum) a season, All stars game & country city...
1,340 games $750,000 a game..........

Union will collect $2,100,000 per game for the 2015 RWC.......before TV Rights, Sponsorship and merchandise sales. Union currently ploughs about ₤150,000,000 over 4 years into development of the game around the world......the NRL will add 2 more australian teams to its competition.........

As I say, I am no fan of Union, but you have to admire what the IRB have done with "a pigs ear"

lol S15 is the only comp in this hemisphere that is REDUCING its salary cap. Yeh they are going great guns

Only in a couple of Brisbane and Sydney schools where the kids are allowed to play every football code except rugby league... That'll change eventually though.


Have to laugh at Gutters. First he compares a sixteen team league in Australia to rugby union in its entirety worldwide and then tries to turn the S15 salary cap reduction into a positive...

Must be an interesting world he lives in.

A sporting competition cutting its cloth accordingly rather than blindingly spending cash to the extent that 14 of the 16 teams are running at a loss is a positive.......and believe me, the amount of money being offered globally for TV deals to sport will not last forever. The NRL may well end up like the NFL......very little sport involved but an awfull amount of TV

I compared the amount of money the IRB gets in hosting rights alone for its RWC, with the NRL contract for 2012 onwards......I could have just have easiy compared the amount of money the RLIF got for the hosting rights of the RLWC 2013 if you'd prefer. I believe the figure for the IRB was 100 million pounds......and the RLIF was slightly less than that....around about nothing IIRC.

Thread drift aside, Rugby League is not as massive in Australia as some posters on here would like other to believe. It's the 2nd placed football code and the third most popular team sport.....the reaction of some posters when faced with this fact smacks of insecurity and an unhealthy belief in the imaginary code wars created by a bored media.

Well, I actually live in Australia and can tell you that it is as big as many posters say here. Tell me more about the country i have lived in my entire life, please!

Where about in Australia do you live?

Northern NSW

Lol gutters, the RU spin is strong in this one!

these are not the trolls you're looking for
Really......so it's massive in Melbourne, Adelaide, Perth, Darwin, Tasmania and Canberra is it? Do you dispute the order of sports and their NATIONAL popularity below?

1. Cricket
2. AFL
3. RL
4. Union.

Cricket most popular! Are you joking? The "county" equivalent is nearly non existent. Don't get me wrong cricket is important to Aussies but nowhere near RL and AFL.