It is remarkably resilient though, imagine if either NSW or QLD won SOO for 23 years straight, I can`t imagine it still pulling a crowd that large.
I suspect that for a lot of union fans now though, Bledisloe is their union day out, especially given the demise of super rugby. I really don`t expect that any of them expect to see the Australians win, however, but it is still an opportunity to see a world-class sporting team in action, that being the AB`s of course.
The sooner the NRL gets more teams in NZ, the sooner we can start chipping away at that internationally successful aura that the AB have by accessing more union juniors, and weakening them. Then we will be one major step closer to shunting union to being a second-tier sport in our region. Fair bit of work to do in the meantime though.