Fans flock to club rugby as Super Rugby continues to play in mostly empty stadiums
The battle is on to save Super Rugby: While Sydney’s club competition flourishes, the conference-leading Brumbies have their lowest crowds ever, Waratahs interest has waned and the only team drawing fans is getting kicked out of the competition.
Whether they are playing in majestic old venues like the Sydney Cricket Ground or brand new fields of dreams like Bankwest Stadium, the backdrop for the Waratahs is always the same: row after row of empty seats.
It’s become a familiar and depressing sight because it doesn’t seem to matter if the team is winning or losing, the Waratahs just can’t pull a crowd anymore.
The only consolation is they are not alone because almost every team in Super Rugby is struggling to get people through the turnstiles so the competition’s deep problems aren’t just confined to Sydney.
In Canberra on Friday night, just over 6,311 watched the Brumbies beat the Bulls.
The Bulls aren’t the biggest crowd pullers in world sport but the Brumbies are leading the Australian conference and have won their last six on the trot at home.
Yet, they have only managed to pull a crowd of more than 9,000 once this season and are on track for their lowest average annual attendances since Super Rugby began in 1996.
“We want to play in front of bigger crowds,” Brumbies coach Dan McKellar said.
"If we don't, things will be dire and that's the reality. We've got to get support for this team.”
The Melbourne Rebels and the Queensland Reds have had the same problems for years. So have the teams in South Africa, and even rugby-mad New Zealand.
The irony is that the only team that’s consistently getting good home crowds is the Tokyo-based Sunwolves, who are about to get punted from the competition. Go figure.
The steady decline in Australian crowds isn’t a knee-jerk reaction to the sacking of superstar fullback Israel Folau because the numbers were already shrinking long before his contract was turn up.
There are a number of contributing reasons.
It sure hasn’t helped that the Wallabies have fallen from their pedestal.
They last won the World Cup in 1999 and the Bledisloe Cup in 2002 and the last few years have been among the worst in history.
The constant chopping and changing of the teams and structure of Super Rugby has bordered on lunacy, while the exclusion of the Western Force from the competition turned a lot of people away, almost as much as Rugby Australia’s brainless decision to increase registration fees at grassroot levels to fund the elite game.
It’s also well documented that Australia is the only major rugby-playing nation that plays four football codes so competition for bums on seats and eyeballs is fierce but it’s still no excuse.
Only 13,885 turned out to watch Saturday night’s loss to the Jaguares in Parramatta but the figure was still more than showed up to see Wayne Bennett’s South Sydney play Anthony Seibold’s Brisbane Broncos so every sport has its battle for crowds.
And for all the woes, one thing holds true. The game’s fans and participants are still as passionate as ever so the suggestions that rugby is dying are way off the mark.
Overall participation numbers are on the rise and club rugby is booming.
Almost 10,000 flocked to Manly Oval on Saturday to watch the Marlins and the Warringah Rats in Shute Shield.
And despite their reluctance to cross to the other side of Sydney, it seems Australian fans are happy to travel, snapping up more tickets to this year’s World Cup in Japan than any other foreign country in the world, apart from England, hoping for the one instant fix everyone knows will boost the game.
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