Fumble Rubbish, love it.
Yeah, I think part of the picture you’re painting in regards to the distractions by the other big sports in Australia is essentially what @hillbilly has been referring to. There’s reasons why those sports are seen as the primary ones, and the ones that are part of the “Australian tradition”.
I, like you, also decided to jump aboard and buy a membership. I grew up watching NRL (my family were pretty much all about NRL and Cricket) and football was never part of the picture, but at some point I bucked the trend and became interested in the sport. I followed the Premier League and Bundesliga and then started to get interested in the A-League, and despite the obvious shortfall in quality compared with the European Leagues, I loved the fact that I could go to games and support a local club. Ever since then, I’ve been really invested in the league, in fact, I’m a lot more invested in the A-League now than any of the other leagues I follow, and there is no team in the world that I support more, or feel more a part of than Sydney FC.
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I still don’t know how this is going to work in practice but AFC have set October to resume the group games:
https://twitter.com/NickRupolo/status/1281122449103323136?s=19
Looks like O’Rourke is under fire now. Apparently he rejected the request of one of the victorian teams to relocated last week.
With the exemption now granted, the three Victorian teams can travel to Sydney on Saturday, but will have to first undergo 14 days isolation in Sydney before playing any games. They will be able to train during that time.
Yep, I was reading that they will be located in Narrabeen. So it sounds like their games will be delayed.
I’m assuming that it coincides with the start of the South East Asian fishing season?
One thing that also hasn’t really been touched upon is the limited population size as well. We have five major sporting leagues/codes in the country. Cricket, Soccer, NRL, Union and AFL. With a population of 25 million, it’s a fairly diluted, adding to the fact that the two most populous cities, Sydney and Melbourne also have the highest concentration of sporting teams in the country.
From just a quick search on wiki, London has 2 Union teams, 1 Rugby team and 5 premier league teams. In comparison, Sydney has 2 (soon to be come 3) A-league teams, 9 NRL teams, 2 AFL teams, 1 Union team and 1 cricket team. Add that to NSW Origin team, NSW Cricket team and the list gets pretty huge and a population difference of 9 million to 5 million you can see the support can get fairly spread out over the different codes and teams
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Rugby Union is dead or close to it in Australia. The stats don’t lie. Sustained only by artificial life support from the media and old-boys’ networks (which seem to overlap).
Rugby is fine.
It’s Super Rugby that’s rooted. Shute Shield is still as popular as ever.
Probably actually more popular now that Super Rugby is in such a state.
Agreed. Trying to squeeze three levels of rugby into a “season” was always going to be tough to achieve at high levels.
Considering the strength and tradition of the relative local competitions around the World and how much International Rugby is played (pre-COVID), I’m not surprised that “Super Rugby” has taken a dive.
And you add in the code congestion, that artificiality of the Australian teams, the Australian teams not being consistently good, New Zealand teams being consistently ridiculously good, and the utter irrelevance of Sud Afrikan teams to an Australian psyche.
Leopards? Cheeters? Lions and Sharks? I think …
Rugby is dying as a participation sport. Once upon a time it was compulsory in GPS schools. Now, it still has all the prestige but lots of kids are playing soccer or even AFL at those schools. At the local level it is pretty much finished even in its traditional heartlands. Islander boys keeping it going elsewhere? P
Islander boys are obsessed with League, not Union (to be overly simplistic and generalised).
Islander boys still use their talents to get full ride scholarships at GPS schools.
What’s the go with our away games at ANZ, can you get tickets or go to them somehow?
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So we have match dates for the remainder of the ACL group stage:
17 Oct vs Shanghai SIPG
23 Oct vs Jeonbuk Hyundai
29 Oct vs Shanghai SIPG
1 Nov vs Yokohama F Marinos
The group stage matches & round of 16 (Nov 3-4) are meant to be at “centralised venues”, which I think potentially means two countries hosting two groups each, and then there is a single venue for the quarter- (Nov 25) and semi-finals (Nov 28).
The final (Dec 5) will be held in Qatar, which has been announced as the host of the West zone. “Member Associations have until July 24, 2020 to submit their interest to host the AFC Champions League matches in the East Zone”, so we should hopefully find out soon what the plan is.
Yeah so none of that is happening for Australian teams