Can we all stop saying how everyone else's posts are ironic...



Look, right now Rugby League in Australia is in a bit of a tough position because of how the game is run.

The NRL (Meaning the 16 team competition and Toyota Cup) is owned by the ARL and News Ltd.

News Ltd is also the games biggest media partner (Conflict of interest!).

Meanwhile the ARL is a shambolic organization of blazer wearers who do nothing positive at all.

The NSWRL hold the power in the ARL. The QRL however are trying to get that power.

Meanwhile the NRL can't really make concrete decisions on...well...anything because the are just an administration set on running the 16 team competition.

Plans for expansion....that all is ARL/News Ltd.



Confused yet?



I don't mince words when it comes to where the game is going, but I have to say, the NRL is in rude health.

Crowds and TV figures are up.

The under 20's competition has made other sports crap themselves at how it draw in so many talented athletes who can pick many different sports but enter this televised, high profile feeder competition.

The game overall in Queensland is just booming. They could handle a team in Brissy and further north easily.

Crowds got much higher after Origin when games started to matter again. Hell even in Sydney games are selling out all over the place.

Facilities are being upgraded which is needed.

The Storm is about to move into an incredible stadium that will boost their attendance.



Its all going in the right direction.


The good news is, there is still room for expansion.

Perth and Adelaide are a must for a national footprint. This will boost the TV money and sponsorships league wide.

Once you have those two teams in place....well now you're looking at exciting possibilities.

New Zealand needs another team. PNG is putting together a bid. I think Brisbane will get a second team.....I actually think we might see a second Victorian side in the competition within the next 15 years.


Other sports?

Well the ARU is screwed.

The A League is expanding, but no teams are anywhere close to breaking even, their new clubs are well under crowd expectations and the momentum for it over all is waning.

The AFL is doing very well and really, over the last 18 months, the NRL and AFL have become so dominant over sport in this country that everything else is struggling to get a look in.

The problem the AFL has is, once they put a second Sydney team and one on the Gold Coast....then what?

You have 18 teams...then say you add Tazzy....and thats pretty much it!


So dont worry about the NRL. yes there are problems, but this game, geez, you couldn't kill it with a baseball bat!

That's ironic

You make me sick....

You would know.

The most important strategic decision in recent years was taken when Australian soccer team was admitted to the Asian qualifying zone for World Cups.

In one stroke it pretty much guaranteed they'd be competing in the soccer World Cup every 4 years.

The one thing that Australian's desire more than anything else is recognition on the World stage. Soccer remains the long term threat everywhere.

serious question numbnuts...when one team has virtually double the league average it's gotta have some effect on the numbers...and does those number mask whats happening in sydney??

sydney games (including illawara an gosford for simplicity) averages are up 7.5 %, which works out at 1000 more people per game, and 6 of the 9 teams showing an increase. sharks, roosters decreased due to their crapness and the eels did to because of their poor early season form.
The Origin period and monday night footy hits the attendances pretty badly, so if it was scheduled differently its safe to assume it would be even more. Examples are that big derbies like souths roosters and bulldogs roosters were played on a monday night in front of a mere 11K and 12K at ANZ. its safe to say if they were played at any other time you get 20,000 minimum.

More afternoon games, less monday night footy and a few double headers say in round 1 and during origin period would definitely help the cause.

without the broncos the league av is 14844, but given its a league average you cant just take a team out. there are teams in many sports leagues with nearly double the average attendance, like man u, barca...... so we just have to live with it

The games admin needs sorted in a hurry as it is holding back the code a bit and progressive expansion is a must into perth, wellington, PNG, adelaide etc.....

NRL average crowds:

Brisbane - 38748
Bulldogs - 20927
Roosters - 20777
Warriors - 20084
Cowboys - 18911
Titans - 18600
Knights - 15701
Dragons - 15604
Tigers - 15591
Souths - 15383
Penrith - 14190
Parramatta - 14118
Manly - 13417
Melbourne - 12970
Canberra - 11097
Cronulla - 9750
------------------
Total: 275,868
------------------

So that's like competing with the crowds that Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Arsenal get (the top four in the premiership).

Unfortunately we have 22 premiership football clubs who compete for crowds, juniors, sponsorship, sports grants, dedicated journalists, TV and radio airtime, newspaper space etc.

That's before we even get to the full-time professional competitions like the Coca-Cola championship, League One, League Two, the Conference, the Northern and Southern Conferences and the six levels of semiprofessional Football in the FA's Pyramid.

Add to this the strongest rugby union competition in the world, who enjoy the sympathies of all the major decision-makers, editors and captains of industry that control all the outside contributory factors which are the life blood of any sport.

It's a wonder that rugby league actually manages to survive at all in the UK!

So when the whingeing Aussies begin their sanctimonious preaching about the standards of the NRL and guttersnipe's like Phil Gould abuse their privileged position to denigrate the quality of super league, the people who run it and play in it, well it just becomes laughable.

They should doth their caps in our direction with unbridled gratitude for our foresight in creating the game and exporting it 100 years ago to our once maligned penal colony in the southern hemisphere.

They should look on with admiring eyes at the way in which we have triumphed against adversity, beating the odds to become the vibrant progressive sport that we are. They should take inspiration from us for if they displayed our fortitude they would surely have put down the threat of the AFL.

Finally, they should stop hiding behind their success on the international stage and recognise that the NRL product, efficient as it may be, can learn much from the entertaining, free-flowing, spectator friendly British competition.

They won't though because the typical Australian is too arrogant for his own good. He is too insular to recognise the possibilities of positive influence from anywhere outside of New South Wales or Queensland.

every RL game in australia is on TV. mostly live against the gate.

BS.

if SL could get to the same standard as the NRL it would be much more succesful than now. RL is small in england because of the administrators etc.

top level RL stands up to any sport. even that overhyped premier league

Jesus Fredie, that's a bit of an advanced word for you.

You best have a lie down as it's probably taken the wind out of you.

If top level RL stands up to any sport why was the NRL dropped by SKY Sports in the UK.

If RL is such a fanatastic sport why is it only relatively successful in one insignificant desert continent in the southern hemisphere?

If the premier league is overhyped then so is state of origin and the NRL. Association Football is a global sport, RL is not.

A few epic posts from some of the Aus posters, I wonder if they are feeling a tad insecure?

Anyway I came across this new fangled business software (from Australia actually) the other day so I did a SWOT analysis on the state of Aus RL:

It appears that the rot started when this “pom” called Moz knocked seven bells out of a bunch of over hyped Aussie RL players. He had gone to Aus on the assurance that he would find lots of much tougher games, but after spending several years in his unsuccessful search he gave up and came home.

The next traumatic event for the aus libido was when Keef the “machine” arrived and received a resounding 10/10 from one of their “enjoyment experts”.

The aus men were so infuriated that they could be seen gathered together in bars comforting each other, partaking vast quantities of various substances, performing a variety of unsavoury acts and doing strange things in hotel corridors.

So the ladies decide they have had enough of aussie men and since there aren’t enough Brits to go around they look for alternatives. They all form ladies football teams to take out their pent up aggression and spend several hours in the communal bath afterwards fulfilling their various needs.

I hope you are still with me here cos this is the important part – To spite their hubbies they enrol all their sons in football teams and shun everything RL.

All the dejected ex RL payers become 22 stone boorish drunks watching re-runs of what used to be state of origin and thinking what could have been.

Tis true I tell you - well it’s as accurate as any of the aussie posts anyway

Former Salford fringe player David Gower made his NRL debut this weekend

The Aussie backs for the upcoming four nations will probably comprise - Slater, Hayne, Folau, Inglis, Boyd, Lockyer & Thurston. Against SL's
Briscoe, Fox, Shenton, Atkins, Hall, McGuire & Burrow.
Our SL players wouldn't get a shirt in an NRL first grade team, let alone Origin or International.
If we were as good as people are saying on here we'd have won at least something since 1972.
As for Gould, I wish he'd have come to coach at Wigan.
If he had we'd certainly have won more than we have this last ten years.

Oh you boring realist



I don't think anyone will deny the talent and strength in depth of Aussie RL.

We just get bored with overbloated egos costantly chelping on about it.

Some fans think that because their team is superior it rubs off on them. That incidently, is not uniquely Australian, it pervades some British teams also

Simple, let all SL clubs build a casino on their car park, especially the ones in run down deprived areas, and pump the money into Jnr RL. It works for the Aussies!

That wouldn't be hard mate...

As I said right at the start mate, very very small cocks.

...and not forgetting the highly publicised constantly reducing sperm counts of Aussie males.

Yes, I think your right about that. But it would also require a state of fair play with RU amongst the media and sponsors in this country and I can't see that happening soon. It hasn't in the last 114 years.



Yes, I'll give you that one. RL in this country has been mismanaged since after WW2. And until they get it right at the top the rest of the sport will struggle on. But I'd like to have seen the Australian game handle the same amount of competition from other sports and the ingrained bias of the establishment as RL has over here. That's why so many British fans take the hump when our antipodean cousins stick the boot in to our game which of course is not as strong as the NRL or the junior comps in Oz. How could it be?

As I've said on other threads before, sometimes I get the distinct impression our cousins would rather see a RL world without an English competition. And wouldn't that be fun, eh?

Run down areas like Bondi, St George, Manly, Noth Sydney, Balmain, JB's an Idiot......

Yeah...thats the name of an entire suburb in Australians wealthiest city. JB is an Idiot!