Danish
Referee
- Messages
- 31,982
Ironically posted by a man who appears to have suffered severe head trauma. What a f**king stupid thing to say. There's no way you believe that.
Interest in rugby league is not waning (if we are to believe it is) because of the shoulder charge and biff being banned. It's the same reason participation and attendance in golf, rugby, cricket or any other sport is down - discretionary spend, time utility, all that stuff.
Only in the rare cases is it 'urrr burrr durr me want hits and injuries urrrrr'
The NRL has lost 30-40% of its marketing footage since banning the shoulder charge. Seriously, go back through the NRL ads from pre-ban and they are absolutely loaded with vision of big hits.
Why was the NRL loading their ads with such footage if no one is actually attracted to the game because of it?
The is no other single play in the game that can raise the profile of the NRL like shoulder charges did. Big hits in league would be played around the world. ESPN would show clips of a big hit without even knowing what our sport was just because of the atttraction of showing 2 massive athletes blow each other up. The 2010 semi-final between the Tigers and Roosters is one of the greatest non-grand final games in league history, and the biggest highlight of that game that still gets replayed to this day is Simon Dwyer flattening Hargraves. That hit alone got its own 2 page spread in the paper the next day surrounded by quotes from league legends describing how awesome it was.
You may say that its stupid to think that big hits bring in crowds, but you might want to explain that to the NRL marketing department and media who lose their mind every time one is put on