please mate, i hardly classify melbourne itself as a city its that far behind sydney.

newcastle, wollongong, gold coast, brisbane, melbourne, auckland.

penrith is practically a city on its own right.

RL areas in australia comprise 55% of the entire population.

throw in our exposure to NZ, and its NRL by a long way

i think he was meaning places like st kilda or hawthorn were cities, which would be quite silly.

they are suburbs of melbourne, much as balmain, parramatta or kogarah are sydney suburbs

Maybe one day, when the NRL realises the N stands for National and not NSW!

Australia only has 10 or so major population centres, how hard is it to get a team in each of them?

the NRL is actually international.

AFLs idea of international is to get a bunch of irish lads and play a hybrid game that no one actually plays.

yes then the aussies bashes them

............

technically Parramatta, Penrith, Bankstown, Campbelltown etc are all cities. And the NRL grand final did outrate the AFL one

and the crowds for this nonsense of an Int game compared to true blue RL test matches in Sydney are?????

ffs as much as i'm a league man through & through, AFL absolutely kills us for passion, crowds, marketing, sponsorship, they are 100 times more proffesional in the way they run their game.

They understand having massive amounts of members for clubs is a sure way of making money, we lag behind.

If you think League is ahead of AFL on a national level then you truelly have your head in the sand

lol. Since when do big crowds validate everything? I'm getting sick from he constant circlejerking over crowds from people on the internet.

Agree except for the parts I've bolded. Passion? At Homebush I've seen 25'000 RL fans make more atmosphere than 60'000 AFL fans. There's no comparison.

As for professionalism, a lot of it is just the impressions given from their all powerful PR department. Look at how the NRL, AFL and A-League have all handled expansion to the GC. Amateurs would be able to do a better job than what the AFL have done.

Not that I have any faith in the methodology used to gather TV statistics but seems we have even lost a key bragging right this year:

[iOverall the AFL GF rated 3.247 million to the NRL's GF 3.070 million from the five capital cities and regional networks[/i

IF we could get a better TV deal next time then the money should be used to bring in 4 new teams; Perth and Central Coast 2013, Brisbane2 & Adelaide 2016. Ideally we would see a couple of Sydney teams disappear but unlikely to happen for another 5-10 years when the pokie money finally drys up and they finally admit there isn't the fanbase or corporate support for 9 teams in one city..

so to sum up :

1. AFL has no team in another country as the NRL does.
2. AFL has no real international game of its own
3. AFL has no origin.

funny how you miss all these things in your sycphantic rants about that god awful sport.

the upcoming RLWC will be a further nail in the coffin for that horrible, horrible "sport?"