Winning on the field again just isn’t enough for Waratahs
NSW Rugby has taken a sobering look at public perception surrounding the sport and embarked on a battle to win fans back to the game.
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The Waratahs have started winning on the field again but the battle to start winning fans back to the game is only just beginning.
NSW Rugby has undergone a major review of the way the public perceives the way it has been running the game and the findings have been sobering.
“I’m a great believer in the saying that a fish rots from its head and we were rotting,” NSW Rugby chief executive Andrew Hore said.
“The public perception of our sport is that we don’t care and we operate in silos and that we’re all over the place and fractured.
“So we’ve got a lot of work to do and we really need to reconnect to the community so in the next two years we’re going to go really hard in this space.”
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Since joining NSW Rugby in 2016, Hore has merged NSW Rugby and Waratahs Rugby into one organisation and got the team back in form under the guidance of coach Daryl Gibson but the fans have been slow coming back so he said they need to follow the lead of other successful sports.
“We’re talking about one team in a state five times the size of New Zealand and getting all that resource in a six month block so we’ve got to streamline,” he said.
“We've got to be more like BBL, the way that they do it is very, very good, it goes for a short time but they get maximum penetration into the community and that’s what we want to do.”
Getting fans to watch the Waratahs is only part of the goal for NSW Rugby. They also need to increase junior participation, which remains static, and be more inclusive by connecting with indigenous and Polynesian communities.
“We’ve got help them be part of the game,” Hore said.
“We're not dying but we’re static so we’ve said that’s a major area we need to work on.”
Hore said NSW Rugby also needed to be socially responsible.
“Where we’re getting our arse kicked by other sports is that they’re not just doing a sport program, they're doing a mental health program, they're doing a positive imaging program with young girls and so on,” he said.
“We need to do more of than and that’s where the our rugby foundation is helping us.”
Often branded as elitist, the Waratahs need an image change. They lost almost $400,000 when they took one of their Super Rugby matches away from Allianz Stadium this year to Brookvale Oval but plan to go back to the suburbs.
With Allianz being rebuilt, the Waratahs will return to Brookvale next season and will also play matches at Western Sydney Stadium and Newcastle.
Earlier this week, the NSW government announced it was giving $20 million to NSW Rugby to finance a new Centre of Excellence in Daceyville and Hore said the next stage would be to build hubs in regional NSW.
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