In this post-footy, post-Spring-Carnival, pre-international-cricket sporting lull, some people’s minds are turning to the long-term trends in Aussie sport. And Crikey’s sport blog has a piece by Bobas, a rugby devotee, on the state of Australia’s five big professional male team sports codes heading into the next decade. It’s very much a Sydney-centric and rugby-centric view (hint: one of the reasons why State of Origin is so important to league is that its club competition is weak and poorly attended, unlike the AFL).
Personally, I think there are a lot of larger forces at work here conspiring to affect the future of the rugbies, Aussie Rules, soccer, and cricket, only barely hinted at in the piece. Cricket’s competition structure is being pulled to pieces by the financial power of India, the rise of 20/20, and the rise of the franchise team in the IPL. By 2020, it’s not hard to imagine that the structure of world cricket will be something more akin to soccer, with the stars of the game spending more time playing for their club(s) than for their country. And then there’s government funding, with the Crawford review suggesting there might be a shakeup there (the panel’s report is here). And what about the effect of rugby sevens becoming an Olympic sport?
But even more than that, the biggest force of all on spectator sports would seem to be the disaggregation of media. Will TV rights deals even exist in 2020, or will the AFL (for instance) sell the live streaming rights directly to footy fans – something they’re dabbling with already for an international audience? Might this result in the same kind of fracturing of audiences that has occurred elsewhere?
Wow that piece is a load of tosh – can’t even get the date of next year’s World Cup right.
League’s issues that I can see are:
1) It isn’t likely to expand much further while its competitors definately are.
2) AFL and Football are gunning for it’s population and youth development bases
3) Player drain, if it eventuates could sap the comp.
AFL is better capitalised and organised but I wonder if it’s bitten off more than it can chew in West Sydney. Also the lack of a credible international competition is a long term issue – the round ball and rugby codes offer young players a wider world.
Association football is in a little bit of a rough patch, crowd and money-wise and there are grounds for concern about some of the recent expansion franchises. However there has been a marked increase in quality in the A-League and on the whole clubs are getting a lot more professional in their managagement and scouting. The developmental infrastructure is the quiet ticking time bomb in the Australian sporting landscape – as the prospects of going overseas improve the competition for youth is going to really hot up, and I think football will be at and advantage over the other codes.
The predictions for Union are fantasy.
I don’t buy the idea that SOO shows the NRL is a weak competition—it’s an extremely strong competition, the highest level of rugby league played in the world—it’s just struggling with terrible PR the result of twenty years of irresponsible club leadership and short-termism in recruitment. Grab seventeen year-olds from the country on stonking contracts, take the cream, dump the rest, without expecting them to get educated or work, and you produce thirty year old boys.
The AFL has a huge market in Western Sydney it can expand into, a market that AFL has never even attempted approaching before: people who aren’t either whitebread Anglo or Aboriginal. If they can get an AFL club playing with some claim to ethnicity they’ve got a great chance to expand. I’m not sure Sheedy’s the right choice there though.
Re. Association football. Leinad, would you agree that the most exciting soccer in Australia isn’t being played in the A-League at all but the W-League which has many more talented juniors and Australian internationals playing in it? Because if you don’t you’re wrong.
If football survived all those years with little to no media support and a *huge* cultural aversion to it in some sectors of the population, it’s hard to see how it can go backwards from here to 2020.
How many people show up to an average NRL game, Liam? 10,000?
Australia loves sport. It also has a lot of it competing for a relatively small market. When commenting on these issues it is hard not to be swayed by the bias of what sport you love and those you don’t. Personally I follow Association Football and Australian Rules Football, while indifferent to Rugby (both types) and Cricket.
My view is that in the states where Rugby League is the major code (NSW and QLD) and where Australian Rules Football is the major code (Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia, Tasmania, and Northern Territory) the status quo will remain.
The question is when a code try to establish a presence in areas where another code is dominant. Examples are the Sydney Swans and Melbourne Storm.
It seems that it requires a substantial amount of resources to get some profile in that case. The Swans have been fairly successful after years of work and almost failing. Also the Storm have some presence in Melbourne, albeit in a niche sort of way despite their on field success. Of course the AFL in Western Sydney will be interesting to see. The AFL will undoubtedly pour plenty of resources to make it a success. For what I gather from locals I have communicated with it will be hard going.
Regarding to cricket my hunch (as a non follower) is that the test series will be followed mainly by the traditionalists and purists. I think the faster game of Champions League Twenty20 cricket will be more popular amongst the young. It is faster, shorter and made for TV. Even I had a look at the Victoria Bushrangers when they played the Wayamba Eleven (I think that what they were called)in India. I think that’s a winner.
Now we come to my main love Association Football. There has been plenty of gnashing of teeth regarding the A-League attendances this year, while many anti-football people are already enjoying some Schadenfreude and mentioning the word ‘basketball’ while football fans are worried whether we are falling back to the insignificance of the old NSL.
There have been a variety of factors (earlier staring times that clashed with finals from the other bigger codes, exorbitant ticket prices in some instances etc.) but overall the pattern of attendances is following what happened in other countries where football is not the main code such as the USA and Japan. After the initial years of a new football league, attendances drop as those fans who are not ‘rusted-on’ stop attending every match. I think this is inevitable and it is a reflection that domestic Association Football is reaching its level of dynamic equilibrium.
Personally I think that the A-League will never rival the attendances of the other more established leagues (especially the AFL that in global terms have very high attendances rates)but it has to arrive at a level where it is sustainable, has a reasonable level of football and provides players with a career path, either in Australia, or as a stepping stone to go and play in bigger leagues overseas.
2009: 16000 average for the 192 home and away games. Finals average 39000
Not sure how useful match attendance is as a measure of ‘health’ of a code.
d
“Association football is in a little bit of a rough patch”
How many times is this now? Soccer has had plenty of chances to catch on over here. It is and will remain a second tier sport. If you think about it soccer at a world level has been amped up an order of magnitude or 2 over the last 20 years. Same has happened here but the gearing’s different. It’ll never reach the levels hoped for by those who insist on calling it “football”.
The big question is over league. Only 2 states and most of the teams are in one city. And the crowds have never come close to AFL. Not to mention its crappy image. How long can it survive? And a lack of international competition has not really hurt AFL, or Gaelic football, or US football or Hurling. And it hasn’t helped Curling so I think this is a red herring.
Darryl Rosin: who should the FFA and the A-League murder to get a 16,000 crowd average in the next 2 years? I reckon there might be a few willing hands…
As far as a measure of health, it certainly says that the basic support is there – such that if the sporting code is playing their cards even half-alright they should survive.
Robert,
League has never had huge AFL-like crowds – look at the size of the suburban grounds some NRL teams still call home in Sydney..tiny.
A SOO game played at the MCG in the mid-90′s broke by heaps and held the all-time Rugby League crowd record until they built Homebush. Howzat for weird. I had to explain to Sydney folk at the time…that Melbourne people just go to the MCG even on a cold winter’s midweek night to watch sport even when it’s not AFL..and they still couldn’t understand why they would. The SFS & SCG were were the biggest stadiums in Sydney before Homebush was built. And of course this doesn’t mean that tiny crowds don’t impact on individuals clubs, vis profits and long term viability, esp. those which have small fixed inner city geographic zones like the Roosters in Sydney and likewise North Melbourne…. and no prospects of big local supporter growth.
You however underestimate NRL’s overall support by only comparing turnout and ignoring the pay and free-to-air TV and the pub audience which is still enormous esp. compared to the TV audience for AFL in Sydney & Brisbane.
Start by comparing the home & away free & pay TV ratings for the NRL and AFL in Sydney & QLD, and you’ll know why many AFL supporters in traditional football states are shaking their heads at the money being thrown at these two new teams, and from their collective coffers. It’s a long game being played out, that’s fer sure.
I’m not sure about Sheedy either Liam. He’s such a Southern States institution and has spent all of his time at two of the biggest Melbourne clubs playing and coaching. The Bombers are a huge, successful club with a long illustrious history, good recruiting, father-sons until the cows come and top facilities etc. Otoh, he was the person behind some of the now biggest matches on the calendar – the Anzac Day clash between the Bombers and Magpies and the Mothers Day Round, amongst other marketing coups, so he’s no slouch when it comes to off-field stuff.
Well, I wouldn’t single out AFL for lacking a credible international comp *Cough* League *end cough*.
I also cant see 20-20 displacing the other two forms of the game, no matter how many Lakhs of dough India throws at it.
Aside from that, no objections to the above. Keen to see how the free-to-air agenda goes.
As a ‘football’ supporter I agree with PatrickB here. However there is no reason why Australia can’t have a viable competition, ‘second tier’ or not. I have mentioned how hard is was for AFL to establish itself in NSW/QLD (with the Swans on the brink of extinction) the A-League is doing something similar all over the country, a few ‘rough patches’ are expected. But IMHO the difficulties experienced by the A-League have been overstated. Melbourne again is the leader of the pack with the highest most consistent support. Just to give an idea of how well they are supported the average attendance so far in the midst of the later stages of the AFL and finals is 17,575. While for Melbourne Storm, which belongs to a very well publicised Murdoch backed competition for this season has been 11,764.
Adelaide and Sydney are not doing too badly either. And Wellington had done remarkably well considering they have been the least successful team in the A-League. Of course who know now with New Zealand qualifying for the World Cup whether their numbers will go up.
There are also lots of differences between the past and the present. The FFA is light years ahead in its administrative abilities to the inept Soccer Australia. We qualified for two World Cups in a row and we are now part of the Asian Confederation rather than the relative backwater of Oceania.
I think Association Football will be a bit like the Olympics and Rugby Union in non-Rugby states. A core of supporters and lots of interest when the national team plays. I also expect many more ‘multi-codal’ followers, especially as young people are comfortable in following more than one code.
Well done tackling those strawmen, PatrickB, now onto the windmill jousting!
Football has well and truly caught on. Relative to five years ago there is no comparison. The new administration and infrastructure are here to stay, the current slump after four successful years is a common feature with start-up leagues around the world and will pass.
A few years down the track, alongside a pro women’s comp I can see a 16 team A-League and the Socceroos occupying roughly the same territory in the nation’s heart as the Wallabies. No one’s mentioned football supplanting the other codes in any and I don’t think that will ever be an issue provided FFA stick to the summer season.
Properly nursed, the A-League will always be a feeder comp in the wider global structure but already its started to improve and may one day rival some of the 2nd-tier Euro competitions. That will be the attraction to the yoof of todai, knowing that there’s a pathway from Y-League or the State comps (and possibly a B-League) to a solid professional comp and thence the world. No other football code offers that sort of opportunity to girls and boys of all shapes and sizes and that’s football’s ace in the sleeve.
LeftyE
I certainly can see T20 displacing T50 as it is always going to fit more easily into TV programming and lends itself well to the “let’s have a family evening out” market in a way that a 100-over game cannot.
I like the tests and the T20 but that one in the middle really is a bit 1970s. And with D-L? Forget it.
These are my sporting biases -
Paid up memebr of an AFL Team
Paid up member of a Super 14 Team
Financially and otherwise support wife’s gymnastics club. She is a National Coach, Selector and Administrator running Elite and Recreational gym, kindergym and special needs classes
Lease Propety from Wheel Chair Basket Ball Association
Paid up member of a cycling club
Didn’t renew Yatch Club membership this season but Silver Card holder of AYF
Father in Law is on Board of State “Soccer” Association
So I’ve got a fair few vested interests.
I (we) had been fearing the Crawford review. Fortunately that has been pretty tame and now we wait with trepidation for the government response. Fortunately by the time they respond next year we will be in the phoney war stage of the election cycle so they will be restrained in any potential cuts.
The AFL are the gold standard in Australia in running their sport. Whether is it junior development or managing the elite AFL competition, you can’t argue that they have done a bad job. Broadcast rights are where the money is. The challenge is to produce a product that demands the big bucks and then keep building on it like the AFL has. (I don’t know how soccer and cycling can do it given the internatinal market they compete in.)
I haven’t read the Crawford review in full yet but the current AIS and State IS system is inefficient. Two National/West Australian examples are the pole vaulting program and Female Artistic Gymnastics program. The AIS in Canberra sucks n huge resources for little results while the State based Institutes regularly get outstanding results. The system needs to change.
Guido
I agree 20-20 suits TV programmers Fran – its just that it doesn’t suit cricket fans. They will win in the end. Its too much like fast food – you cant do it night after night.
And for our next essay:
A-league Soccer would be doing better in Australia if not for the COMPLETELY LAMEASS team names like “roar”, “victory”, and “fury”. Discuss.
The AFL has a huge market in Western Sydney it can expand into, a market that AFL has never even attempted approaching before: people who aren’t either whitebread Anglo or Aboriginal.
Haven’t heard of Steven Silvagni or Ron Barassi? Adem Yze or Basha Houli?
AFL has always catered to everyone, the main deciding factor has been the ethnicity of the places where it is played. 75% of all Australians with Lebanese descent live in Sydney, for example. It’s no surprise they aren’t well-represented in AFL ranks.
The only real outlier is Australians of Chinese/SEA descent, but I think it’s fair to say that as a group there isn’t any 1 sport that has succeeded in luring them en masse with the possible exception of badminton. Then again there is Peter Bell – and Les Fong, who was a giant (figuratively) of the game in WA and is in the midfield of West Perth’s team of the century.
damn not closing blockquote @ 15. instant replay:
Guido
If you really want to chuck up your afternoon tea, I think I might live in early uptake multi-codal territory, I know quite a few families in the eastern suburbs who follow and support the “Quad” – Roosters, Swans, Tahs & Sydney FC.
Told you, you’d feel queasy…twice now.
Agree 100% I guess there is this trend of ‘americanisation’ that it is not solely the domain of the A-League. (ie ‘Storm’ ‘Vixens’ ‘Rebels’ etc.) Interesting that for the new teams there is a trend in more traditional names. The new Western Sydney team is called Sydney Rovers, while the front runner for the name for the new Melbourne Team is ‘Sporting Melbourne’.
LeftyE
Do you really think “cricket fans” like L50? I doubt it.
Guido, to me they’ll always be Real Mount Druitt, playing from a Blacktown Bernabeu.
Slightly off topic, but check out Coates outburst in response to the Crawford report:
http://www.smh.com.au/news/sport/articles/2009/11/17/1258219834744.html
Makes K.Rudds climate change denier bollocking look like a mild rebuke. Honestly any doubt that this crowd are power-mad eugenicists has clearly been removed.
“I will leave it to you to tell [archer] Simon Fairweather and [weightlifter] Dean Lukin he’s no longer a hero.’
Mad and grammatically incorrect. And they only wanted an EXTRA $100 million a year FFS.
Commercially, limited overs (50) has done very well over the years Fran – at least at international level. That’s where the big money has been for ages – hence the taxing schedules on players.
Cricket fans are a different breed. 50 over *is* short for us. Born and bred on a 5-day game – and always knowing thats the real deal. You’re either one of us by early breeding and brainwashing, or you just wont get it.
You dont actually watch 5-day cricket per se – you *live* with it on in the background. This us why Radio cricket commentary survived TV – where practically nothing else (but popular music) did. The sole survivor of radio sport.
20-20 is vertical baseball to people like me. Cricket fans, that is.
Oh, and the most *critical* point as to why 20-20 cant and wont make the other forms redundant: It disrespects the ancient, spiritual yin-yang balance between bat and ball.
Yay, has it not placed the bat on HIGH PEDESTAL? does it not WORSHIP IDOLS of willow before me, and BLASPHEME upon all cricket order? Is it not thus an ABOMINATION to mine eyes; an OFFENCE to the cricket Gods??
Basically, I expect it will be smote.
re: T20. It’s amusing, like for soccer players in 5/7-a-side competitions in summer: a bit of fun, but remember you aren’t playing for sheep stations. Where the change is happening, though, is that the professional players are playing for them…
@Con’n the Herberium: Coates and the AOC have their barrel to roll, and they do it with disaster predictions. From what the reports said of the review, apparently that’s not all the rolling they do?
Generally, I agree with the result of supporting the participant-rich sports.
Well Lefty, I definitely see myself as a fan but I never warmed to the L50 format and the handful of times I went along I was surrounded by people who either didn’t really want to be there or only went there because they wanted to get stonkered.
I saw very few actual fans of the sport. There was the occasional good contest but most you wouldn’t remember.
And as to the contest between willow and leather, the guys who can stop the willow win T20s as nearly anyone can connect with the bat and get away with it for long enough to look capable in that format. In that SA v England contest the other day, anyone who went for less than 9 runs an over was a hero.
I saw some of the T20 Champions League, and yeah, I got a real UEFA Champions League vibe… it was weird.
Since League hasn’t died following everything that has happened in the past 15 years, it can never die. Everything that could go wrong has, and it’s still limping along.
AFL and ARL crowds were roughly equal in the early 90s, so the difference is probably attributable to something within that period. 3 hypotheses
AFL centralised at stadia. Not only are the suburban NRL grounds small and crappy, they’re only accessable from the local area. If a fan moves intersuburb, going to home matches becomes very difficult. The major stadia are also awkward for public transport, either a hike away from Central station or in the middle of the Olympic Park mausoleum.
Expanded TV coverage. It’s a cliche, but the NRL is really alot better than the AFL on tv. There is no shape or form to AFL on television. Where is the kick going? What’s the strategy. The players are spread out so an intelligent viewer can’t see patterns or flows away from the ball, or see the player making the run. We’re left with the scrambling and isolated acts of athletic prowess. At the ground you can actually see the game. This carries the subsequent hypthesis that NRL games would rate better which, if you take into account the whole country, is actually true. The usual practice of taking the 5 mainland capitals misses out on regions, and the regions of NSW and QLD are far more populous than the regions of the AFL states.
Everything that went wrong for Rugby league. Beginning with Super League.
Incidently, I never understood code chauvinism. It dominates the thinking of media commentators, sports administrators and people talking on the internet. This idea that a code should beat the other codes rather than maximise themselves. The people they’re fighting over aren’t as stupidly monogamous to a single code.
Yobbo @ 17 – He’s utterly right about AFL in the context of Sydney . Swans crowds are ludicrously socio economically homogenous. Anglo middle class insipid fans, which probably explains why the crowds fluctuate so much with success. Currently AFL in NSW is in a ghetto of people who want to get away from the proletarian ethnicness of league, but never went to a GPS school and thus never learnt how to pretend Union was interesting.
This is quite astonishing really. The fanbases of the Melbourne AFL clubs always seemed quite equivalent to the fanbases of Rugby league clubs in terms of ethnicity. Especially managing to draw in every migrant group except the East Asians. I’m willing to bet that just as you can see South Asian kids with steedens across NSW suburbs, there’s South Asians with sherrins accross suburban Victoria.
John Coates can go stick it up his official Olympic jumper.
If the AOC thinks funding the Simon Fairweathers and jai Wallaces of the world is a high priority, they can use the TV rights money yo fo do.
I’m very much with the review. If we’re going to fund sport through government, fund sports people actually play, and make the funding for everybody, not just the tiny minority who go on to compete at the highest level.
Robert began:
Nope … let’s not. At least, not the elite stuff
This is the only thing our sport funding bodies need to consider.
You’re right Richard about Sydney. AFL is a new sport there though and had to take what little crumbs it could get. In areas where AFL is the predominant code like Melbourne and Perth, everyone follows AFL, even recent migrants who had never heard of it before they came over here.
As for T50 vs 50-50, the crux of the problem with 50-50 is that game has basically been solved. 50-50 was a much more interesting game when it was played as a regular cricket game, but when Sri Lanka brough the “slog the first 10 overs, then work singles for 30 overs, then slog again” strategy to it, it became the default strategy for every team and the middle 30 overs became much less interesting as a result.
T20 just removes the boring 30 overs in the middle and as a result it will do far more damage to 50-50 (which will probably disappear as a format sooner rather than later) than it will do to test match cricket.
This week I have compared myself with popular golfer,and the Tiger worth.I don’t love sport in Australia anymore.There is a ex-footballer,Aussie rules,has decided some women are liars, without giving much detail.He is fond of giving people a biff,he reminds me of Tombstone Territory a cowboy show in the late ’60.s he is bound to get a biff of Equalisation for being an ex-footballer living like a character from Tombstone Territory!And I guess that is the real sport,because you may need a secretive SP Bookmaker to challenge the odds.The prickles hit the pasture pretty quickly today,although I lost five cent coins in the dirt below where the prickles had been dugout,by the adz, agricultural hoe swung a bit like a golf club.Actually I could create a competitive game design around eliminating prickles in paddocks.Of course,it wouldn’t be seen on TV every weekend,until a certain type of prickle surgeon dominated!? Boring Bastards,aren’t they!?
“Everything that went wrong for Rugby league. Beginning with Super League.”
I’d take half a step further back and say “Beginning with the establishment of the Broncos” but I’m a Queenslander from the 80s so I would say that, wouldn’t I?
d
Hee hee. That SMH report on Coates is classic.
I say, if the AOC wants to use medal tallies as their benchmark KPI, let them be judged on it financially and compete in a marketplace against other Olympic Committees. If they can’t deliver, we should get the Dutch or the Russians in.
(And yes, I was referring to the AFL’s lack of ethnic and/or working class chops in Sydney. Unless Collingwood’s playing and the Pies supporters outnumber home fans, Homebush Stadium has the distinct feel of Ramsay Street to it).
Richard, I’d say SCG/Homebush is 50% full of socio economically homogenous, Anglo middle class insipid fans who originally hail from Victoria, South Australia, Western Australia and Tasmania.
There are quite a few clubs whose fan base swells with success if not all…..But I did think that SCG was way fuller towards the end of the season this year after finishing out of the finals, than I thought it would be. Small beer queues what’s not to like.
Why should the grateful taxpayer fund commercial sport?
Why should students at the AIS be HECS exempt? I think teachers and nurses are more valuable to our society than anorexic gymnasts.
Shouldn’t we be funding more community participation in regular sport and encouraging older Australians to participate in more strenuous exercise?
Less sport on TV. Less money for sport. To the point its bloody mindlessness doesn’t take up most of the year. And as for the criminal conduct of our so-called football “heroes” acting as role-models for rapists and drunks and practitioners of domestic violence. … One damned good reason why Government should not give money to sport, I would’ve thought.
I’m a dual-code Victorian – I follow Collingwood and Melbourne Storm – and I actually really love going to the Storm games, they have a fantastic atmosphere with drumming and singing (Go Super Bill!). It will be interesting to see what the new stadium does for attendances – I know quite a few people who just refused to return to Olympic Park due to the awful seating (I’m 5’4″ and my knees touch the seat in front – poor 6’2″ MrLaurie has all sorts of dramas fitting).
Cricket – I like to watch it as ‘background’ during summer, rather than going to the games – too hot, too long. Its much better in a pub with cold beer
My point almost exactly, PB@39
I’d insert the qualifier “elite” before sport however.
Yeah, fair enough, Fran. The kids need physical education and adults need to keep fit. But the gross attitude of some of our elite sportsmen (its mostly men, though I gather either the netball or basketball women did something silly recently), is no examnple to our young boys as decent young fellas. Funny how I have that expectation about education.
It wouldn’t be so bad, PB, if we stopped tolerating the talking heads expecting elite sportspeople or personalities in general to be “role models”. With the possible exception of holders of public office or positions of trust, they ought to be held to no higher standard of ethics than any person at random one might meet.
Is it really any worse that some footballer tanks up and urinates in a public place than if some “nobody” does it? IMO, it isn’t. Indeed, not all people handle the public gaze all that well and one may expect that at least some will behave badly precisely because they are in the public gaze and we have enabled them. And of course, as Galtung & Ruge would note, bad behaviour by first world celebrities is highly newsworthy and likely to be exaggerated rather than treated dispassionately.
Great Western Sydney is a huge investment for the AFL.
It is clear that the AFL model is predicated on one game per week in outlying markets.
The Commission predicts that continuity and the existence of a local rivalry will stimulate interest in those markets. But it is important to note that gate-takings and club memberships make up a relatively small proportion of AFL earnings. The gate merely serves as a group of extras who are willing to pay money to add colour and excitement to the TV coverage.
Additionally, the Commission predicts that the TV audience for extra games in Sydney and in SE Qld will stimulate ratings and the value of team sponsorships for Victorian teams.
No footy head has much profile in GWS. On-field success will develop that profile. Sheedy doesn’t translate to GWS and in terms of his coaching he is yesterday’s man.
GWS would have been better advised to appoint a coach who has more current competence in the game. Certainly, in terms of talent, GWS will be given Aladdin’s Cave. A gun coach will have an ideal opportunity to build a very potent team so long as the appropriate game plan is implemented.
I have a feeling that GWS will work because the AFL want it to work. They have that much clout, but it may be their “I’m Keith Hernandez” moment. Sheedy just couldn’t help himself.
Do Australians really prefer the 5-day game? They don’t seem to in Brisbane and Perth. In Sydney & Melbourne they certainly prefer Test Matches. In Adelaide I suspect a large amount of people attending are domestic tourists.
The real problem for Australian cricket is if they can’t find anyone to play in Test Matches any more. Let’s hope India stay competitive in the longer form and still want to come here. England, India and South Africa may just be enough to sustain Test Cricket in Australia.
John Coates has shown he is King Rent-Seeker in a land completely filled with rent seekers. Lawn Bowls should receive more funding that Water Polo in Australia, simply because Lawn Bowls keeps people active for longer, and therefore contributes to demonstrably better health outcomes.
The British are spending all that money to avoid embarrassment. It is a different story when you are hosting the Olympics. Their funding will lapse when the Olympics are over and the Torys control the purse-strings.
Crikey certainly knows nothing about Union. The likelihood of the Brumbies winning the S14 in 2010 is vanishingly small, and, as for a Wallabies/Kangaroos match, Union/League matches have been tried in the past with uniformly dismal results. For one thing, they become boring one-way affairs as – unsurprisingly – the League side wins the half played to league rules by a big margin, and vice versa. For another, breathe not a word of it but RU is a much physically tougher game than League, and the “Union rules” half is not even proper Union rules at scrums and mauls. In a scrum not depowered there would be significant risk of league players being, literally, killed.
Union’s great advantage over the two other body contact sports is of course its international profile, but that has its downside in the outflow of high quality players to much higher salaries available in Europe. Allowing such still to qualify for Wallaby selection would do something for the strength of the Wallabies, and thus for the problem of a highly parochial Australian sporting public turning their backs on the game when the Wallabies as recently get regular hammerings. The ARU have been generally dismal at exploiting the advantage of having a sport about which, unlike AFL and league, global audiences actually give a toss.
If I hear one more insidious rah rah stiff upper lip all for the team and great contest expressed by another baby faced brat wearing a baggy green cap I will have to call the fire brigade to put out the fire. as for the brutish thugs and rapists populating both the nrl and afl the mind boggles to think the government gives these animals the time of day. these professional sportspeople are just walking talking commercial products waiting to sell me a new car or another airconditioner /rant
I’m glad you acknowledged that it was a rant…
ffs david_h, where is your respect? these are world class athletes who have made incredible sacrifices to serve their country proud and raise our national profile and self asteem, all for our pride in this wonderful country and sense of aussieness in general, which may help to sell a few important products, so what? these iconic australian heroes deserve everything they get money wise, and hey nobody’s perfect you know, we all make mistakes and anyway it’s all the meeja’s fault. go aussie aussie oi oi.
adrian @ 49,
Are you serious? reads like a parody to me.
Why has farnackling been neglected in this discussion? Nothing better captures the Australian ethos. Why was John Clarke not on the Crawford committee?
AFL has larger attendances due the focus on memberships as well the Melbourne culture of going out to sports. I also think that playing the games at only a few grounds helps.
The NRL clubs have only really targeted memberships in only the past few years. The next few years should see an increase in club memberships and hence NRL crowds.
NRL clubs have started to follow the AFL in moving club games to the large stadiums (SFS, ANZ). But clubs will totally not abandon their traditional grounds. For example, the West Tigers play games at four grounds including ANZ and the SFS. But they know that their three games at Leichhardt are big draw cards and usually a sell out. I make sure I make a Sunday game at Leichhardt every season. Sure the facilities are a throwback to the ’80s but that is why it is a great day out.
Personally, I love ‘em all. Well, except rugby, but I’d probably watch that too if I’d grown up in a rugby culture. Speed, strength, violence … what’s there not too like.
But wait … I don’t like soccer either. Lots of blokes doing clever dainty things but most of it seems a bit pointless since there’s only the remotest prospect that any of it will lead to a goal. Also I do really despise the diving, rolling-in-agony fraternity. I typically find myself desperately hoping somebody will thump ‘em hard enough to make the play acting genuine. But that’s me and ultimately I approve of having choice so I wish them all well.
I also love my cricket: in order, 5-day, 50-over, beach cricket, backyard cricket, 20-over. The problem with 20-over is that I like watching a bowler working out how to get a wicket, but there’s no time for that in 20/20. The best cricket I’ve seen was that long-haired Indian trying to get Ponting out in Perth. Absolutely brilliant stuff.
And my prediction (hope): a lot of money will go out of sport and that’s a good thing. It’s supposed to be fun and frivolous and I feel that the ridiculous salaries are destroying that side of the game. Perhaps that’s why soccer players carry on with all that diving, bleating and whinging – because there’s too much at stake.
Paul@50.
No and yes.
Thanks Adrian for alerting us to the disrespectful nature of the former David_H, he has been summarily tried before a bunch of upstanding intelligent and respectful members of the footballing fraternity and found to be in breach of the Australian National Ethos section 1A and as a result handed over to our good friends with the long white pants and beaten into a soggy heap with the aid of a couple of Grey Nichols. The whole sorry saga was dutifully captured by our good friends at Channel 9 and will be aired at an appropriate time, once the sponsorship deal with Toyota is sorted.
Now we return you to your comfortable armchair and the national tiddlywinks championship between world champion Ima Gunagetcha and last year’s runner up Uandwho Sarmy brought to you by Beer, cuz it the aussie thing to do.
Having said that i in no way endorse the beating of davidh to a soggy heap, but a few hours in front of footy show correctional videos or forced listening to Denis Commetti or any of the great aussie footie commentators would probably have done the trick and taught the ingrate a bit of respect, like that great sporting hero John Coates obviously has. while we’re on the topic maaate, why doesn’t krudd (he he) introduce Sporting Respect as a compulsory subject in primary school so that people like davidh wouldn’t make an embarrassing fool of themselves in the first place.