I’m sorry but can people stop using this throw away line that the only reason that fumbleball carved out a niche audience was because some RL teams died in Sydney.
It is used to form this narrative which is that fumbleball could never be popular in Sydney and Brisbane or that rugby league could never be popular in WA, SA or Victoria. It is just absolute b******.
Other than small core groups of rusted on supporters like ourselves, most others will follow sports casually and with teams, generally engage in greater numbers with those that win and disengage with those that loss. It’s not rocket science.
It's an appeal to emotion that NSWRL supporters use because there is no justification for Sydney to have nine teams. All of the arguments they use are logical fallacies that have no basis in reality.
Swans generated good crowds in the 80s when they ernt through a brief period of onfield success, then lost support as they drifted to the bottom of the ladder. Crowds rose when they acquired Tony Locket and made it to the final. The Sydney Kings' experience similar fluctuations in support based in how they're travelling on court.
People bring up AwFuL having eight teams, but conveniently fail to mention that those clubs are well supported. The only one that struggles is North Melbourne, but the irony is AwFuL have tried to relocate them to Gold Coast.
No one who finds fumbleball boring will watch it, regardless of what happened to their RL team.
It's not the only reason, and I don't see anyone claiming that it is the only reason here, but like it is glaringly obvious that the Swans are the biggest were traditional clubs with strong local identities have either been axed or merged that this is obviously a rather big factor, or the biggest coincidence in Australian sports.
How do you know it's not due to changing demographics?
Interstate migration from the southern states to the northern states has been happening for decades.
Anyone who gives up rugby league for fumbleball would have been a fan of both sports to begin with, or at least had a casual interest in it.
The regions you're talking about are fairly close to the CBD and affluent, so it's understandable that working class RL fans have been forced out west and replaced by cashed up southerners.
Mate, that’s a little melodramatic isn’t it? Surely your interest in the game isn’t that fragile.
If the ARLC brings back the Bears it will kill RL in Perth and prevent us from ever becoming a national sport. Over the long-term it will condemn us to niche status because and see us become irrelevant like rugby union. We're an immigration nation and new Australians aren't going to get behind a game that has no presence outside of the east coast and is based around one city that has nine clubs drawing small crowds. I rarely hear foreigners talk about our game. In the beginning of the year I heard Derek Rucker compare something on court to AFL. He lives in Brisbane after playing for Brisbane, Townsville and West Sydney. During the FIBA Women's World Cup I heard the commentators talk about AFL.
I'm not interested in supporting a continuation of the NSWRL. If the game wants me to invest my time and money on it then I need the ARLC to treat me, my club and my state like equals. If it's not willing to do that then it can get stuffed.
