Yay Sharks 4 losses on the trot Dx
this post was submitted on 10 Nov 2023
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Rugby Union
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Ouch, what's gone wrong you think?
Great fun this Edinburgh match! Fantastic quick tap, pass try
And a fantastic drop to finish!
Table after round 4
Outside of the big cities in Scotland how popular is Rugby? I was reading an article about Super Rugby written by a Hawkes Bay journalist who was bemoaning the fact that Hawkes Bay only managed to get a dozen players into Super squads despite coming 2nd.^1^
And a throwaway line at the end of the article indicated that the Horrorcanes aren't playing a home game outside of Wellington again this season. That means its 2021 that the last Super Rugby game was played up here in the Bay when the canes played the Western Force; and I have a vague memory that that might have actually been a Force home game that got moved for some reason anyway.
Provinces like mine have been completely abandoned by Super Rugby despite long term success at the NPC level (including being one of the only provinces to consistently break even or make a profit without needing propping up from NZR). And NZR wonder why our public are falling out of love with the game. If you're in the Bay why would you care about the Hurricanes, and if you're in Wellington you see the same matches over & over in a stadium fit for 35k that's probably not even half full.^2^
1 This is a perennial problem, and it goes back to before the franchises were allowed to sign from anywhere. Even when they were supposed to pick from their unions, Hawkes Bay would hardly get any players in the 'canes even if they were finishing far higher than the Wellington Lions were in the NPC. I really think the HBRFU should follow Taranaki's suit & ditch Wellington partner up with someone else - Moana Pasifika would be choice.
2 Interestingly its almost impossible to find crowd attendances for Super Rugby in New Zealand these days. It used to be commonly published now its rare to find it outside of an estimate in a news article. Whether that's just shitty media relations or a sign of how bad the crowds are I do not know. You can get attendance for all the Aussie stadiums, and for other events at the stadium in Wellington (A-League, FIFA Womens World Cup etc) you can find it, just not Super Rugby.
So. Not great is the truth. Pro club rugby massively subsidised by the national team and only 2 pros clubs. Super six, the next tier and semi-pro, scraping by with no club even remotely close to breaking even without SRU cash.
To make matters worse the super6 is centralised around Edinburgh, with 3 clubs in it, 0 in Glasgow, 1 in the "heartlands" in Melrose (the club everyone loves to hate in the borders), and Stirling representing all of the "north".
The traditional lands of players are the farm lands of the borders south of Edinburgh, with Stuart Hogg coming from Hawick (pronounced Hoick) being a prominent example. And it is still played massively, but representation at national team hasn't aligned. Money talks and the private schools have fed more and more into the pro setups.
We won't mention the u20s
But it isn't all doom and gloom either: our pro clubs punch well for their funding, our player pool has never been the biggest, and we are growing - especially the womens game. The super6 is showing signs of preparing players pathways and retaining that post school contingent, and the game is growing outside the traditional lands, with player numbers up almost 5% this year iirc. Glasgow were selling out regularly, though this has rolled back, and it was never really a rugby town. Edinburgh attendance up with the move to a smaller stadium too
Its amazing Scotland has done as well as they have recently with that foundation to the international game. It'd be like if the NPC in New Zealand was reduced from 14 to 6 and the Super Rugby teams bank rolled by NZR dropped from 6 to 2! But in a way the financial foundation between the two countries is identical.
All Blacks success and sponsorship bank rolls most of the game here. Super rugby is mostly subsidised by the central contracting of players - I doubt any club could possibly break even on game day receipts & their own sponsorships.
There's a big problem at the NPC level which ranges from semi to mostly pro depending on the union. It had been holding its own up until Covid; but year after year of down scaling, fiddling and demoting its importance has seen attendances even for the popular unions down.
There was a reasonable influx of cash from the Silver Lake partnership with NZR selling a stake in their new commercial entity, but by the sounds of things some provincial unions have pissed that away on short term player contracts trying to buy titles rather than using it to invest in the game at club, junior & women's levels.
Again similarly to Scotland at the high school level its essentially well funded schools spending lots of money competing against each other and so young players are identified given scholarships to schools and from there it flows into academies. So if you miss out when you're 15-16, you might as well try to get into another pro sport like football, basketball, league or cricket as your ability to make a living in Rugby can dissipate quickly if you don't make those age grade squads.
MLR has helped a bit though; there's some players who're stars over there, like Jayson Potroz who has never been a chance for a Super Rugby. Those lads get a full time gig by playing an MLR season followed by an NPC season.
6717 announced for Edinburgh tonight. A great figure for Edinburgh
Is that for a URC game? If it was at Murrayfield it must have looked empty!
Super Rugby's attendances are hard to guess and will change a bunch based on the home team and who they're playing. I'd guess some of the NZ home games against the weaker Aussie teams might only get around that many into the stands. But the big NZ derby matches would still be pulling over 15k regularly.
Hawkes Bay pre covid times would have been pulling in 6-8k crowds for the NPC fairly regularly. McLean Park is a 12-15k ground, and the stand opposite the camera isn't huge so even only half full it looks & sounds like a much bigger crowd.
There is a semi-permanent stadium behind Murrayfield now for 7.5K. So it must have been pretty busy. Edinburgh used to regularly struggle to break 4
But we're now 3 from 4 and so crowds might well stay this season!
Oh right, so they'd only put a URC game in Murrayfield if it was a big one like a playoff where the extra capacity is warranted?
One thing that was kinda cool about the NPC this year is the bigger unions that have struggled to fill their Super Rugby / International sized stadiums were forced to play games elsewhere because of the FIFA Womens World Cup taking over those stadiums. It made a lot more sense having NPC sized crowds in smaller grounds including a return to the Onewa Domain for the Battle of the Bridge this year. That ground hadn't hosted a match that big in 30 years.
The SRU have a stake in Old Glory DC of the MLR, so a few players go out there each year who aren't quite ready for the URC. We also have a scholarship for a couple of players to go and soak in rugby for a year or two, often our most promising players have had this
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Macphail_Scholarship
But the last few names on this haven't really broken through. Since the switch to SA...
So yes, a lot of similarities between the two countries. One day I'll make it down, I dream of going to watch us get pumped in Eden Park
My partner & I were supposed to be over in 2020; visiting her family & then doing a roadie around the top, but something happened that year, I forget what.
Unlike European Rugby NZR schedule test matches all around the country, usually based on how many people they think a match will attract. It's hard to say now given how Aussie have fallen so far and Scotland have risen so much in the rankings, but it would have been Scotland in say Dunedin back in the day. In terms of an actual building, that ground is top 2 for Rugby (along with Rugby Park in Hamilton) in NZ.
Other than Christchurch's current temporary stadium, all the other big ones - Eden Park, Wellington, pre earthquake Lancaster Park etc are multi purpose grounds so because of the space requirements for cricket you can end up a long way from the sidelines in a footie game.
More & more though NZR are scheduling games at Eden Park just financially it makes sense I suppose. They do risk saturating the market a bit, and further pissing off us provincials - but until Christchurch gets a 45k+ stadium only Wellington really has a stadium + population that can compete with Auckland.
Surely if Scotland ever do tour NZ, Dunedin has to be a stop, it's literally Gaidhlig for Edinburgh