O/T - Is football REALLY the sleeping giant?

[Daneel]

Your a tool
please back up your very intelligent call of bull$h*t?
everyone knows that league has changed, the game is not so physical nowdays

I'm the tool, you don't even know if your talking about rugby or league. Obviously you have never played league. Get out there and give it a go you will see just how physical it is. I have played league at a qld cup level (and before you start saying im tooting my own horn, im the first to admit i wasn't good enough) and i still play in my local competition in Toowoomba, I bash and get bashed from pillar to post week in and week out and then some genius like you tries to tell me what i'm doing isn't physical. Please, before you go saying something isn't so physical nowdays, get out and give it a go first. You are insulting everyone that plays this great game, from an nrl level down to the grass roots level.

 

[sooperdooper]

I'm the tool, you don't even know if your talking about rugby or league. Obviously you have never played league. Get out there and give it a go you will see just how physical it is. I have played league at a qld cup level (and before you start saying im tooting my own horn, im the first to admit i wasn't good enough) and i still play in my local competition in Toowoomba, I bash and get bashed from pillar to post week in and week out and then some genius like you tries to tell me what i'm doing isn't physical. Please, before you go saying something isn't so physical nowdays, get out and give it a go first. You are insulting everyone that plays this great game, from an nrl level down to the grass roots level.

maybe you should interpret what im saying i am in a rugby league forum...hmmm me thinks im talking about league.

The physical side of the game is on the slide.... you can say its not but the public, the players and past players all know it is.
They used to bring the crowds in as people wanted to see the physicality of the game....

who are you to make the decision in saying i dont play now?

 

[Utey]

playing footy hurts...

 

[Daneel]

maybe you should interpret what im saying i am in a rugby league forum...hmmm me thinks im talking about league.

The physical side of the game is on the slide.... you can say its not but the public, the players and past players all know it is.
They used to bring the crowds in as people wanted to see the physicality of the game....

who are you to make the decision in saying i dont play now?

Reading between the lines suggest that you don't. If you did surely you wouldn't bag its lack of physicality. I wish you did play, i'd love to see you running at me, my eyes wide open, adrenalin pumping through my veins, the sound of two bodies crunching as defender meets attacker, standing over you screaming at you to get up (or even perhaps the other way around). There is nothing better (including sex, but don't tell my wife i said that) than the rough and tumble of a game of league, I only wish i was 20 again so i could do it all over.

I have asked family and friends what they think about the apparent lack of physicality that you believe the game has.They are the general public and they pretty much all agreed that the game still has it, the only differnce being in less of the dirty play than use to happen and the 10 metre rule keeping teams further apart than before it was brought in.

I posed this question to my teammates and they pretty much wanted to tear you apart as they believe there is no lack of physicality in the game they play.

As for past players, well i am in my last season so i will answer that one for you next year when i'm sitting back watching instead of participating. Who knows, i just might agree with you and think that the future crop of players that take my place just aren't physical enough. To be honest though i hope i'm never that critical about how players in general play the game considering i will no longer be able to.

To finish i will say that players pre mid 80s were playing a tougher brand of league, however it was more due to dirty illeagal play and the players only being 5 metres apart rather than todays game being played with less physical encounters. I for one would rather play and watch league where the play is hard yet fair and with a little more room for the backs to score tries, which i believe people want to see at a footy game as much as a little rough and tumble.

 

[Suitman]

NRL - Melbourne vs Manly (1 vs 3) 13 000.
A-LEAGUE - Melbourne vs Sydney - nearly 40 000.

Interesting figures.

Suity

 

[Parra Guru]

Not really, in Melbourne of all places Suity??

 

[Prodigal Eel]

NRL - Melbourne vs Manly (1 vs 3) 13 000.
A-LEAGUE - Melbourne vs Sydney - nearly 40 000.

Interesting figures.

Suity

Was a good game to watch aswell....geez those brazillians can play!

 

[Suitman]

Not really, in Melbourne of all places Suity??

You have posed more questions than answers.

Suity

 

[Parra Guru]

:lol:

silly

 

[strider]

NRL - Melbourne vs Manly (1 vs 3) 13 000.
A-LEAGUE - Melbourne vs Sydney - nearly 40 000.

Interesting figures.

Suity

excellent crowd !!! .... i watched a bit of that game - good to see such a crowd .... gotta keep it up for a yr or 2 to be fair dinkum tho

and the league crowd was actually pretty good too considering the lesser ground ..... and gotta agree with guru - I wouldn't expect much of a league crowd in melbourne anyway

 

[Suitman]

excellent crowd !!! .... i watched a bit of that game - good to see such a crowd .... gotta keep it up for a yr or 2 to be fair dinkum tho

and the league crowd was actually pretty good too considering the lesser ground ..... and gotta agree with guru - I wouldn't expect much of a league crowd in melbourne anyway

I flicked between both games and enjoyed them both immensely.
I was, however, really disappointed in the NRL crowd. It was the match of the season for the Storm and it was no better than their past three games. Very disappointing.

The A-League crowd however was one out of the box. It will be interesting to see whether it happens again. I have my doubts. But, all in all it was quite a crowd, which takes me back to my original thought in this thread.
There is just so much potential in this country for Football to take off.

Suity

 

[fish eel]

Interesting thread.

Funnily enough, I missed it because I was in Germany!

Anyway, there certainly are some interesting times ahead.

The move into Asia, regular games etc mean that Australian Football has a very significant financial base in the long term.

The Asian Cup and World Cup qualification will be a financial bonanza for the national federation....continental club competition likewise for the A-League clubs. While the A-League clubs suffered start up losses, I think you'll see them become more stable in the next 5 years with this cash flowing in....as well as the lucrative fox sports deal they have.

They have plenty of work to do though to build on last season. They have made a mark, and on an international level. Who would have thought 3 years ago, that a domestic club in Australia could poach a manager from a mid table, Scottish Premier League side?

I dont think its necessarily the case that the A-League need the best Australian players - that will never happen, because of wages, and because Europe is where it is at. There are plenty of vibrant leagues in the world where that countries best players play outside their native league.

Do they need Dwight Yorke to attract crowds? 40,000 went to Telstra Dome on the weekend without him.

Also, the Socceroos are now, in my view, Australia's number 2 sporting side besides the cricket team. No other Australian side is a turly national team. The Wallabies, for example, really are just an east coast side. Who would have thought a home based Socceroos side would attract over 30,000 to watch Kuwait.

Is it a threat to the NRL?

In terms of attracting sponsorship dollars, yes.

Taking crowds away, probably not, at least in the long term. Rugby League is so ingrained in our culture, as is AFL in Melbourne. There are challenges facing the league though, the not so solid financial stability of some clubs, who without poker machines would go bust...or other clubs who without news limited money, would cease to exist.

As I said....interesting times!

 

[spiderdan]

soccer has too many ties to eoru culture that despite the best efforts of every administration of the last 15 years, they can't shake. while this is the case they will find it hard to make in-roads into the more popular sporting codes it competes against.

 

[strider]

I believe the NRL crowd was decent ... the games I've watched at melbourne in the past I've noticed something ALL the time - there is a line near either end of the stand where the cheap seats stop and the expensive seats start - and its ALWAYS obvious cos the expensive seats are generally empty ..... but that line wasn't there on Saturday night.

as fish says, soccer is really national .... victorians will reject NRL (league) as a matter of principle because its been so much of a rivalry about aussie rules being better than league (league is the traditional main rival) - but soccer/football is different .... melbourne has alot of football oriented nationalities who r probably finally gonna get a chance to really back their original #1 sport (Mediterranean Descendants love their soccer/football - I don't mean Mediterranean Descendants in a bad way there )

anyway - it'll be interesting to see if its a bandwagon thing or not .... parra get a sh*tload of ppl at games when things are rosey, but when the excitement wears off, numbers dwindle ..... is soccer in australia gonna be a bandwagon or a long term thing???

 

[strider]

soccer has too many ties to eoru culture that despite the best efforts of every administration of the last 15 years, they can't shake. while this is the case they will find it hard to make in-roads into the more popular sporting codes it competes against.

i think they've made good steps to overcome this tho ... by making one team per city it should help overcome some of this - altho there is still gonna be those staunch groups who will reject the a-league teams in favour of their nation oriented state league teams

 

[Suitman]

Some good points there from everyone.

I think ultimately, there will be a market for all sports. Football has the advantage of being the only "summer" football, with no competition for most of it's season. A big plus for sure.

Suity

 

[The Colonel]

The only problem I see at the moment is the a-league losing teams and having new ones come in. I've read somewhere that there are two already in extreme financial difficulty and the NZ side is under a perform or perish ultimatum - is this about right?

For a competition not quite two years old it isn't great....

 

[fish eel]

soccer has too many ties to eoru culture that despite the best efforts of every administration of the last 15 years, they can't shake. while this is the case they will find it hard to make in-roads into the more popular sporting codes it competes against.

The Socceroos are Australia's only truly national sporting side, in terms of representing broader Australia. The World Cup squad, for example, had players with diverse european backgrounds, from German to Croat and Italian...we had players with pacific islander background and players with so called dinki di Aussie backgrounds and guys with middle eastern backgrounds in the train on squad.. That is Australia.

I dont think there is another national sporting side as refelctive of multi cultural australian as the socceroos.

 

[Suitman]

BTW Strides, Melbournes last 6 home crowds have been:

Round 16 vs Bulldogs - 10373
Round 18 vs Broncos - 15479
Round 20 vs Sharks - 11486
Round 22 vs Tigers - 12481
Round 24 vs Warriors - 13477
Round 26 vs Manly - 13991

I still believe that 1 vs 3 should have attracted a better crowd than that.

Suity

 

[The Colonel]

I dont think there is another national sporting side as refelctive of multi cultural australian as the socceroos.

Maybe not right now, though if you look through the NRL in a few years we'll struggle to pronounce many of the names that come through into first grade.

There are plenty of players within the NRL now that have European heritage as well as islander heritage who will eventually play for Australia.