6
Not really. Rugby in Australia seems to have been going downhill for years. 10 years ago a Bledisloe Cup game in Sydney would be an automatic sell out and was considered a genuine event on the sporting calendar but now they struggle to sell 60k tickets even with all the kiwis in Sydney. There is no growth in the heartland and the area where there was genuine growth has just been stabbed in the back with a samurai sword.
Sure there have been a few bright spots such as the Reds run to the title and NSW actually winning something in front of a crowd of 70k or even the Wallabies charge to the final at RWC 2015 but it just feels that Rugby has been sliding for sometime and now as far as I care it has dropped off of a cliff.
Last night would have been an automatic “stay up and watch” for me 12 months ago, much like the rest of the tour but I haven’t watched a minute of it and I just don’t care. I read an article about the game this morning and that was mostly because the headline was “Wallabies suffer historically awful loss” and I even laughed at them while reading it.
That is what the current ARU board has done to the game. The current board are reaping what they have sown.
As for the initial comment, the Socceroos have just qualified for a 4th straight World Cup, the Rugby League World Cup has been pretty successful with some genuine breakout performances from Tonga and Fiji. The AFL is good at staying the headlines even though there isn’t much happening apart from the draft. Cricket has the Ashes in which will dominsate a lot of sports chat for the next 6 weeks. While the Wallabies have just been hammered by a side that usually battle with Italy for the 6 nations wooden spoon.