Rugby poll -thoughts
Mar. 4th, 2006 07:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chickenfeetA few observations:
- Northern hemisphere folk aren't much interested in southern hemisphere rugby despite the fact that it's usually much better! In fact, the overwhelming popularity of the Six Nations is quite a surprise given how many really poor games that tournament produces.
- The sample is too small to establish if the converse is true but my experience would suggest so. Oddly, the only Kiwi responding appears not to know what rugby is.
- Only a quarter of the people who claimed to follow the Six Nations follow any kind of non-international rugby. This tends to confirm my belief that below international level, the European game is a bit of a shambles. I don't have the data but I'd be really surprised if only a quarter of people who follow the Trinations, follow Super 14.
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Date: 2006-03-04 12:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 01:58 pm (UTC)MafiosoRussian and Man U were bought by some Yank. IOW, only things that make the front page of a paper.If it helps, I'm told Leicester Tigers are doing very well. But I only know that because a couple of our old boys play for them. I mostly know about Six Nations because men at work talk about them, just as I know we were doing well in the cricket in India because a friend at the computer next to mine looked up the score on Thursday. I hope we're still doing well, but don't actually know.
Sport-phobic females aren't that vital a demographic are they?
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Date: 2006-03-04 02:07 pm (UTC)Not the hardcore ones. For rugby though, expanding the demographic beyond people who follow the Six Nations but nothing else (male or female) is. I think the European countries have a long way to go with attracting women too.
I was looking at some stats this morning. Canada has something like 35,000 registered male players and 16,000 female. England has 11,000 female vs 1.2 million male! (The Canadian figures exclude school, college and university players where the proportion of women may well be higher).
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Date: 2006-03-04 03:41 pm (UTC)Women's rugby is seen as fairly weird here, except in universities.
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Date: 2006-03-04 03:44 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 05:52 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 01:02 pm (UTC)Now if more LJ users were men (and not from California) .....................
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Date: 2006-03-04 01:20 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 02:28 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 02:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 02:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 02:42 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 04:34 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 01:24 pm (UTC)I really enjoy the TriNations - big boys rugby!
I follow the Super14 until it looks like my team (Stormers) have bombed out again, and then I look at something else.
I follow CurrieCup until WP fall out, and then I'm not interested.
I'll watch any Heineken Cup game that I see, as it's quite amusing.
When watching the 6 Nations, I have the option (via Sky's Red Button) to listen to the Radio Scotland commentary. I prefer this because, it's more descriptive and less bitchy than the usual (biased) idiots you get on TV. The TV guys tend to talk over whats happening, whereas the Radio guys are describing the action - so you are looking at it, and the commentator is saying "It's a ruck, there's a Englishman on the wrong side, so that'll be a penalty" versus the TV commentrary of "Some loose ball there......", and you've no idea what's going on.
I guess i just find it more educational!
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Date: 2006-03-04 01:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 01:35 pm (UTC)Sky did have a thing called Playercam for a while, which I thought would be a little camera on their shirt or something - which would have been teh cool, but it was just a camera that tracked that player round the pitch - sort of a bit boring!
I'm not sure who the Radio Scotland commentators were for the Scotland England Game, but it just seemed to be way more knowledgeable than Brian Moore's incessant whinging!
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Date: 2006-03-04 01:38 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-04 02:09 pm (UTC)rule is to protect your neck...
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Date: 2006-03-04 02:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-06 09:54 am (UTC)The only problem was that they so desparately wanted Scotland to hang on that it made the coverage so tense that I almost crashed near Drumnadrochit.
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Date: 2006-03-04 03:15 pm (UTC)Compare football. I wouldn't call myself a football fan by any stretch of the imagination, but I do know what's going on in the Premiership and follow the fortunes of my club. I also notice (and even occasionally watch) European level club events. I used to be more involved when league games were shown on terrestrial TV, because then I would actually watch them! Not religiously, but fairly regularly. But I don't care enough to pay money for subscription TV or go to a pub specifically for the purpose of watching a footie match.
So yeah, as someone with a vague interest in the scores, no more than that, I know a lot more about club football than club rugby.
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Date: 2006-03-04 04:07 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-06 10:02 am (UTC)Football is the game in Glasgow - any other sport can't even be described as second best, it's simply irrelevant.
This makes me a bit unusual, in that I follow my local team (Newcastle) with a bit of a jaundiced eye, but I do follow them. I didn't follow the Glasgow teams when I lived there (pre-professional era) and didn't get the taste for League since it didn't get played where I lived.
I do follow the Six Nations, and will watch the All Blacks play anytime I get the chance: watching the best in the world at anything is always a pleasure.
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Date: 2006-03-06 11:57 am (UTC)Aside from a smaller player base there is one real difference between rugby and football. In rugby, it's the international side that makes the money. The international side subsidises club rugby. Therefore, there is a strong argument for managing affairs so that money from (eg) the Scottish international side is used to pay Scottish players not handed over to the clubs to pay for semi-retired South Africans.
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Date: 2006-03-06 11:36 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-03-06 11:52 am (UTC)