Hmm those are articles from my home town...no doubt there is similar feedback coming from a lot of other areas too.
Didn't know they were starting an AFL academy at Pacific Bay, either. Interesting!
I am not suggesting that everyone sits on their laurels (in fact there certainly needs to be a cleanout and a fixing of attitudes by the sounds), but with some changes to how things are done, these issues *should* fix themselves.
When I was in primary school (in Coffs), we all played soccer in the winter and cricket in the summer (soccer overall though). But we all still followed 'the footy' and everyone knew who the players were and watched origin and all of that. In high school there was still very little league played (we played all sorts of sports, but union was the main one) but again we all still talked about the NRL all the time. Actually a good example of this was that in year 12, we had an NRL footy tipping comp and well over half our group was in on it.
The only caveat with what I said is that year 12 was 2002 for me, so I'm getting on a bit now! haha
I guess the bottom line with what I'm saying is that the overall footy culture is still there (the great ratings that RL gets in regional NSW and QLD are a great example), even though the major sports we played at school (in the 90's and early 2000's) were pretty much anything other than RL. Just gotta get the systems and attitudes right!
