4
Have to agree with that. This is soul destroying. They have ruined Western Australian rugby with absolutely no remorse, and worse they have alienated and incredibly lost a sizable chunk of their fan base and viewership.
What annoys me is Melbourne is almost 3x the size of Perth and still struggles to pull a crowd even remotely close to what the Force average, and they have only just begun their tenure too, The Force averaged up to 30k in their first few years and kept those crowd numbers well above 20k for some considerable time before the slide which will inevitably happen to any sporting team lacking success, the crowds were starting to come back for the Force and they had the passionate sea of blue which was a real fan base, and that includes this site, its a true fan site, how many other super rugby franchises have anything like the sea of blue or Thewholeforce fan club. They have cut their most passionate supporters off at the knees with no contingency plan in place, its sad, and truely shambolic, and with the whole damning senate inquiry it now seems to be corrupt. I could only imagine the Melbourne crowds will dwindle to as low as 4-5k a game 12 years into their existance, and for a population larger than New Zealand that is pathetic.
I am cancelling Foxtel like everyone else and wont watch this tripe anymore, I will be letting the operators know exactly the reasons why too. The whole ARU board need to go and the Australian Federal Police should launce an investigation into the sham contracts and money trail, anything less than this is pure injustice.