I just read this on the Daily Telegraph site. It is very well expressed and heart felt by another betrayed NRL supporter. How long do you all think it will be before it is to late for RL. Like I said the other day, there is a tipping point, once you reach it there will be no return.
http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sp...s/news-story/b97925e83d2edff384b86d9191444f84
Israel Jun 28, 2017
What about the 8,000 that showed up at Belmore a few weeks back, or the 6,000 that attended Campbelltown, or the 10,000 that attended Kogarah this past weekend?
Suburban grounds are not the answer. Improving the game day experience and providing value for money is. Furthermore, Thursday night blockbuster will not attract a crowd, neither will a Friday 6pm game. I went to my first AFL game last weekend, and I can honestly say the atmosphere, the very family friendly atmosphere, was beyond any NRL level Rugby League game I've ever attended. It was an event. DJs, competitions, jumping castles, activities, families and it was full of life. Not dead like a league game. I loved it, despite the fact I absolutely hate AFL. They're doing it right. They're also engaging our kids. I know too many kids who are mad Swans or GWS fans because they visited the schools and gave them some merchandise and tickets to a game. Kids who have no interest in league, yet live in the middle of league heartland, because the Swans spent 20 minutes at their school. What are we supposed to do? Convince them AFL sucks? Not allow them to kick the Sherrin around with their friends at the park that's just recently been transformed into an AFL field. The same park I grew up playing rugby league in. Their school integrated AFL posts into the playground. No rugby posts.
My biggest worry is for the future of the game. The present is bad enough. Fans are disillusioned. I'm a paid up member, yet haven't used my membership once this year. Why would i? The best games are Thursday night and Sunday 6pm. I can't attend even if I wanted to. But I don't. Not anymore. I've had enough with the NRL taking fans for a ride. I've had enough of coughin up $180 for an NRL jersey. AFL ones are $80. And soccer $90. Do the sleeves on a shirt really justify an extra $90?
But what about the kids? How will the game look like on 10 years time? In 20 years time if we lose the young generations? Kids are not playing league anymore. The NRL fed us some fake figures last year about increasing participation, and finally conceded that participation rates have actually dropped off significantly. Why? Kids don't want to play, and parents won't let them. Why haven't we introduced weight/age classes across our junior system? NZ did it decades ago! Why's it so hard for us to do? Why have we been speaking about it for the past decade and done nothing? Why do we have 25,000 less adults playing the game than we did a 2-3 decade ago? Our population has increased by 4 million yet senior playing figures have actually decreased. It's not just kids who aren't playing the game!!
Back to the issue at the centre of this article. Dropping a Sydney club won't make crowds better. It'll disillusion a fan base and we'all lose fans. What makes Buzz believe that eliminating a team will equal an increase in crowds for another? Does he really think taking the Sharks out of the Comp would mean those 14,000 fans will show up to St George games instead? Or Tigers fans would become Eels supporters? Take North Sydney as the case study, and let's never repeat that again. An entire region lost to League, and a legion of fans welcomed into the Swans grandstands. If my team is culled, I'm done. I won't support another club. I'll go back to the Tahs, or maybe even start following the AFL more closely, since I had an absolute ball at the Swans game Friday night. BTW there was 35,000 fans there, and only 6,000 at Campbelltown on the same night. The weekend before only 7,000 showed up to watch the "most famous rugby league club in the world" the South Sydney Rabbitohs. Don't forget rugby league flourished with a dozen clubs in Sydney for a century. AFL continues on doing it, despite their clubs being even closer neighbours than ours. Rather than cull clubs, we should be talking defending our core markets, and developing new ones. Perth and Adelaide both averaged 15,000 fans 20 years ago. Imagine the size of these clubs today had we supported them. They'd be established 20 year old franchises with a established fan base, and theoretically an established development system. We'd be a truly national sport, we'd probably be arguing about adding a second team in those cities to create cross town rivalries and leverage their massive supporter bases. But no, we can't even get a second team on the biggest rugby league market in the world, Brisbane.
We have the worlds best sporting product. We also have the world's worst sporting administrators. It's about time rugby league backs itself, takes calculated risks, and reaps some rewards, instead of being a reactive and static sport.
I love rugby league. I hate the NRL. Both with a passion, because I want what's best for the sport. And the NRL doesn't have the sport's best interests at heart. Heck, had I said something like this to Greenberg over Twitter, he would have blocked me, despite me only highlighting my concerns for the game, caring for the game. Oh wait, he actually did. Yes, he blocked me, because what the NRL dowa best, better than anyone in the world, is disillusion it's most passionate supporters, the ones that matter, the ones that spend their hard earned money on the game.
