Melburnians will never care about RL, nothing wrong with that - it's just the way it is.
I think generalisations like this are a little harsh. I am a born and bred Victorian, having lived here for a fair majority of my life, and growing up around AFL. Obviously, I'm a big AFL fan but over the last five years, I've really gotten behind the Storm (and not because we've been winning). A heck of a lot of people I know follow the Storm, but the trouble is they don't go to all the games. Once the new stadium is built, I reckon we will get some pretty handy crowds.
Also, you might find that the reason why 90% of Victorians who don't follow RL is that they really know nothing about the sport. As others have said, unless you have Fox, the game recieves absolutely nought exposure in this city. TV only reports on Storm, 9 shows FNF and the Sunday game after midnight (even when the Storm play) and the newspapers show 1 page of footy article/s 20 pages into the sport section. If we had a broadcaster who was prepared to show Friday night Storm matches live, after a while I reckon the audiences would be big, bearing in mind the C9 telecast begins an hour before the AFL.
Also, one deal that the AFL has, which obviously won't happen any time soon for NRL in Melb, especially with Channel 9, is that AFL games involving non-Victorian teams on Foxtel, are actually broadcast on free-to-air in their respective states using the Fox feed. Imagine if tomorrow nights minor premiership clash against Souths was away, I'm sure there would be plenty watching the game if 9 could show the Fox feed.
Anyway, this has turned into a bit of a rant, but my point is that it's a bit unfair that people call Victorian's insular etc, when absolutely nothing is being done to promote the code, bar 1 ad each day in the papers advertising the upcoming Storm home matches.
