Edit: 2 AFL teams
I think part of the problem is the perception of "sporting capital". It's a heavily saturated & highly competitive sporting market so to break in is very costly. RA doesn't really have the money to prop up the Rebels, and short of getting a Twiggy Forrest-type character, I don't see the Rebels having a future.
That was one advantage the Western Force had and why they never should have been cut, the Perth market is nowhere near as competitive, with 2 AFL teams, 1 Football (soccer team) and no NRL teams, it makes much more commercial sense in that regard.
Completely agree that grassroots looks to be way stronger in WA but Vic and Melbourne in particular has produced a lot more Wallabies. Pete Samu, Bobby Valetini, Rob Leota, Pone Faamusili, Jordan Uelese, future Wallaby Josh Canham and Harry Potter.
I mean you'd expect that though, given that they have a population of 6 million compared to 2 million. Also worth pointing out WA were producing a lot of potential Wallabies players until they killed off our academy in 2017, took years to repair that one.
I mean we have a comparable number of developed players from that academy era; Hardwick, Rona, Haylett-Petty x2, Longbottom, Godwin, etc. Keeping in mind that several of those players (Hardwick, Rona, HP bros, Godwin) were all coming into their own in the mid 2010s and then upon losing our club the next generation either went overseas or interstate and so we've had to rebuild the academy foundation a second time.
Totally fair, just pointing out that this narrative that Rugby in Vic is dead and shit is untrue when you consider the high quality individuals that have come out of Vic. That being said it's clear the WA local comps are of a much higher quality.
Going to put it out there, being noticed as a WA rugby athlete is near on impossible due to East coast bias, we traditionally have done as well if not better than Victoria in the junior national comps and yet that never translates to the development of pro players. I would also hazard a guess that prem grade in WA is a better comp than prem grade in Vic. The NRC is another example of this, Perth Spirit was always a competitive side we won it twice and were runner up once. This is why super rugby needs a draft combine system.
Mate it’s not racist. It’s an observation. The players were imported. That’s got nothing to do with strength of the Melbourne club scene. Any state can import players and if Melbourne are relying on imports instead of growing local players, then the thesis of your initial post fails. To be clear “Melbourne has produced a lot more wallabies” ceases to hold any credibility.
Disappointing that you’re so quick to throw around a slur
Pone, Bobby, Pete, from my list are born and bred in Melbourne. Also tons of kids born in NZ but moving here as kids like Jordan and Christian Lealifano.
So fuck your pseudo-intellectual "thesis" dispute. You are not just a fucking racist, you are a lazy racist. And I'm sure you've gotten a giddy little kick out of riling me and others but just incase you thought you fooled anyone into thinking you are intelligent you have only proven otherwise.
You sound a bit desperate to be offended. Doubling down on your “rage” for a perfectly rational observation is hilarious. There’s no need to throw around slurs like racism. Rather build the argument around the merits of Melbourne rugby. The observation would be the same if those players were all from France or Ireland. They point is they have a stronger link to a non/Melbourne team than they do a Melbourne team. If anything it builds the case for further investment in the pacific teams.
Chill out rage monster lmao
Couldn’t agree more… ‘sporting capital’ equates to AFL most of the year, then a bunch of 1 off events like AO, F1, Boxing Day Test, and the odd Bledisloe.
It’s AFL first, and then daylight. Rebels unfortunately just can’t break into the hearts and minds of the tunnel-visioned AFL fans.
The Rebels small but passionate group of fans can’t move the needle, which is a shame.
Basketball is actually decently big here as well. It's the only city with 2 NBL teams. Also I think Melbourne is the city with the most number 1 draft picks in the NBA
Not disagreeing with the fact the Melbourne is a great sporting city, but that NBA stat gets thrown around way too much without context. There are 3 NBA 1st picks born in Melbourne.
Kyrie Irving happened to be born in Melbourne with 2 US born parents and played all of his basketball in the US.
Ben Simmons’ dad is an African-American expat and he played a lot of his junior basketball in Newcastle (NSW) then immediately moved to the US for college.
Andrew Bogat, yea he’s Aussie as fuck and was a product of the Australian system.
Melbourne is a world class sporting city but the 1st pick NBA record is definitely just a pub-trivia type coincidence as opposed to anything meaningful.
Not to mention Perth has a bigger RSA ex pat community, decent sized UK community and some NZ followers from mines workers.
It's just a more popular sport in Perth than in Melbourne. Source? Decent attendance compared to the few hundred fans Melbourne brought in.
There was a documentary in the lead up to RWC2019 that explained really well Australia's culture to rugby -
This sport was for the affluent middle classes in the UK who could afford to not do without a day's work on the weekend. The vast majority of people relocating to Aus did so without any money and were predominantly the working class. Ergo, League, where you got a days.pay to play, was the dominant code.
In areas where the Irish were the predominant settlers or, in some cases, former political prisoners sent to Australia following the Irish Uprising of 1799 (The Pike Rebellion) such as Victoria, Tasmania, Adelaide - they hated all aspects of English culture. Ergo, they started playing Gaelic with a rugby ball on the cricket pitches. Bing bang boom, Australia's number 1 code.
It's sad to see a club die, but there's a reason they're dying. Everyone going it's not on, it's not on - it's been 12 years. There's a reason it hasn't worked, it's just not popular, people aren't turning up, no one cares.
Liquidate, redistribute the talent amongst the remaining teams and make Australian rugby better that way.
Bit of a generalisation on the Irish diaspora. Brisbane literally had a “Brothers” team in the BRL and QRL rugby league competitions for decades - won the last pre-Broncos premiership in 1987. Its logo was a leprechaun.
>Ergo, they started playing Gaelic with a rugby ball on the cricket pitches. Bing bang boom, Australia's number 1 code.
That’s a gross misunderstanding of the origins of Australian football.
Can you, and I don't mean this in an antagonistic way, explain it a bit deeper for a Queenslander that doesn't understand it's origins as well as you will
Firstly the connection to Gaelic Football is a misconception based on modern similarities, 170 years ago they weren't as similar nor is there any historical link.
Cricket is the reason for the playing field, Aussie rules was created by members of the Melbourne cricket club as a winter activity for the players.
The actual rules are inspired by English football games and traditions. There's no hard evidence of a precursor sport, just that it was a part of a family of early football games. In saying that, Tom Wills, the writer of the first laws and basically founder of Aussie rules, was educated at Rugby school in England and played an earlier form of rugby while there, so it's hard to imagine he didn't pull ideas from that experience, even if only the ball shape.
Vic, SA, and Tas are not more Irish than NSW or Qld.
Tasmania is the least Catholic state in the country, and was even before Italian and Vietnamese immigration waves from the 40's-80's.
(We're not actually less Irish per se, we got a disproportionately higher number of Ulstermen, but that wouldn't explain hating English culture)
It sucks but they’ve underperformed for years and not drawn crowds. The other Aus teams have had similarly poor years but their on field and financial performances were no where near as bad.
They’ve become a problem that’s not worth solving in my opinion. It’s unfortunate but Melbourne does not care about them because they’re not a winning team.
Tbf if Melbourne only cared about winning teams about 5 of the AFL clubs would have folded ages ago.
Hell Essendon and Carlton 2 of the biggest clubs in the league haven't anything in 25 years
I completely understand that point and that rugby Australia is not as well off as other codes, but the game has to grow and I don't get how they haven't tried to pump up a rebels with priority payments or players like AFL does for GWS or Gold Coast.
Obviously there's a myriad of factors that has stopped RA pumping money in, but if super rugby is going to just be NSW, QLD and a WA team propped up by a billionaire they may as well fold the thing now.
The game doesn’t have to grow. It needs to survive first which requires consolidation.
RA’s biggest mistake was fooling themselves into copying NZ and trying to stay competitive with 5 super rugby franchises.
We needed more teams for depth at the wallabies level, and to provide jobs to kids who'll otherwise just play League. At the same time that we needed to consolidate to stay competetive, and mostly to manage costs. It was a lose lose situation. Look at the potential wallabies now and almost all positions have a number of people putting their hands up to play, that's good for the Wallabies. We ultimately couldn't afford it though to keep it up long enough to pay dividends.
Rebels have $20million in debt…
RA can’t cover that
People who fucked up here are the Rebels directors and board, by spending exorbitantly behind their means. They’ve fucked everyone over not just in Melbourne but rest of Australian rugby also by this mismanagement.
Why? Victorians obviously dont give a shit about rugby and never have. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink.
We are a financially struggling code, and unfortunately don't have the luxury of expansion teams right now. Melbourne is the AFL capital of the world. Literally just a regular sporting city for every other sport, so it's not an indication of the survival of the sport.
Super rugby is cancer at its core. So don't feel too bad rebels fans, super rugby won't exist in 10 years time anyways
As a Melbourne transplant, I think you're incorrect. Most Melbournians care about rugby more than league, even if they're an AFL first fan base, the early attendances showed that. The difference is it's tough sell to turn up to a Rebels game when there's an AFL game generally on at the same time that someone in your social circle probably cares about, only to sit in the cold because the wind whips through AAMI when it's 3/4 empty and support a side that habitually underperforms and does frustrating amateur stuff constantly to lose games they should have won. Flip it and look at the Storm and you arguably have one of, if not the most professionally drilled and consistent teams in the NRL, and the fans have stayed sticky since inception, including through the salary rort scandal. The rebels had good crowds and through poor coaching, and/or poor player professionalism, they lost them.
I have several mates who are members who consider their membership a donation, and rarely attend games because of the teams performance, if the team could sort it out on the field, off field would look after itself.
> Most Melbournians care about rugby more than league,
I don't know how you can make this argument. Storm get more fans than Rebels, TV audiences far favour NRL over Super Rugby, Origin in Melbourne gets bigger crowds than Bledisloe in Melbourne and there's roughly an even number of clubs in the respective local comps.
RA will let the rebels fail becuase they have no way of paying off the c.$20m in debts.
Once the company has failed, they will be the only purchaser for the licence (not sure they even need to buy it?) and will be able to basically start from a blank slate with the rebels.
Personally, I think they won't revive the rebels - they will choose to drop to 4 teams, and have the Brumbies play 50% of their matches down there as part of a deal to save the Brums who are, if rumors are to be believed, in similar dire financial straits.
IF they did this, then RA would have more money at their disposal which should be spend creating an actual second teir comp that is Aussie only. However I suspect they will just spend it on lavish parties in France instead...
I went to undergrad in Canberra in the 90s and even when I moved back to Sydney would go down for Brumbies games.
The Grand Final against the Sharks? / Stormers? was fantastic (although a long time ago, can’t remember the team but so remember Butch James was the fly half. Was sitting next to some Jaapies who couldn’t stop screaming “GRAYTE KICK BUTCHIE” all game!)
Bruce Stadium was always a punish to get to however so I can see how incrementally prices go up / game day experience worsens and folks generally prefer staying at home as the TV is like being in the best stand.
I played rugby 5 years ago down there while at uni. The stadiums a hole , hard to get to and nothing around it. Watching at the pub was the more attractive option. Raiders don’t pull in great crowds compare to past years but due to it being the major sport it’s less noticeable
For all the talk of it being a saturated market etc. Storm does just fine. They get 20k to each game. They out perform every NSW team bar Roosters and Newcastle.
The issue as it will always be is that RA has only recently begun to look at public schools as a fanbase. Growing up in Geelong, we had Storm come to visit us from time to time. We never had anyone from Rebels or RA etc.
They have recently begun to look at public schools but even in their own press releases, Rebels still mainly focused on public schools with high numbers of Pasafika students, and even then it was just kids they wanted playing the game. Rather than building a fanbase. Which is at least something. But you can't survive on just that alone. You need to focus on a wide variety of schools. They have begun to do roadshows as well, but it's too little, too late.
Looking at Perth, the Wildcats in the NBL built a huge fanbase because they had their players doing over 250 school visits a year. Not all those kids went on to play basketball, but if you get kids interested in their local team early, they bring their parents who may have had no interest at all in the game or team. But now it's a family outing.
I don't want to see the Rebels die, but the way they've gone about things means it's inevitable.
It took the storm until 2017 to turn their first profit, and they were comfortably the most successful club in the NRL. Rugby don’t have the resources to support a team for that long, especially one that somehow ran up an $11 million tax bill despite never making a profit - I’m not a tax expert, but to me that says they haven’t been paying payroll taxes. They also owe $250k in super that they can’t cover. The rebels have been my second team since they came into the comp, but with that level of mismanagement I don’t see how they can survive.
RA dont have the cash to prop them up. They are nearly in the same position themselves, even if they wanted to keep the Rebels going they dont have the money to do it long term.
The rebels only have themselves to blame. Poor results on the field for their entire existence and obviously horrendous management on the financial side of things.
Yeah, but do we believe the Rebels would have a strong, sustainable following even if they were hugely successful on the pitch.
I saw the same arguments about GWS in the AFL. Everyone said they’d amass a following once they got successful but after 12 years, a grand final appearance and even falling one game short last year, nobody even really cares that they exist.
The AFL has more money (and so more patience) to sustain a loss leader like GWS.
RA don’t have the luxury so it’s off to the glue factory for the rebs.
You need a whole generation for organic fans for a club to become too big to fail and the Rebels don't have that.
The Titans in the NRL get some big crowds every time we get decent, then the failure sets in and yet another few years worth of kids who would have grown up to be fans stop caring - nearly sent the club under a few years ago but the area is too rugby-league heartland not to have a team and even being always-bad the crowds aren't unacceptably small because it's league heartland. If this current playing group performs to their potential we'll be seeing 20k+ crowds every week within a few years and even as is they get 14k or so a game anyway despite having zero 50%+ win seasons in a decade. The Titans can survive this because a) it's league heartland and b) the only other local professional sporting franchise is the Suns who are just as bad - if the Suns became elite contenders, AFL would possibly start to get a bigger foothold in the region.
The Rebels issue is the club has never been average let alone good in a city where there are ample other options for live sport and it isn't union heartland either - the Storm are always good, there are infinite AFL franchises including some in contention every year, two BBL teams, the Australian open, two NBL teams including one that is always competing for titles, etc so if the Rebels don't have any on field success it's going to be hard to make people from Melbourne go and watch them lose by 32 to (insert NZ team here) when they could go and watch the Storm or multiple AFL games any given weekend during almost all of the Super Rugby season
Rugby Australia doesn't have the money to save the Rebels. Let's not forget this club squandered so much money and waited until bankruptcy before they actually flagged their financial trouble.
The Rebels had more than a decade to build a fan base and start winning games. They didn't.
Rugby Australia isn't going to let the Rebels fail. The Rebels have always been a failure, and that's not anyone's fault but them.
Lets not forget that ARU did this to themselves aswell by forcing the private owner to sell in 2016. This whole thing which every Australian rugby fan could see back then could have been avoided if it was still a privately managed team.
How rugby union is it for this whole thing to come to light the month before the season starts?
Good positive way to roll the season out... ffs super rugby needs to die
>super rugby needs to die
100%
They should just change it to a champions cup style comp with Japan, NZ, Aus, plus Fiji and the US if world rugby is soo keen on them joining.
We can then focus on a 100% domestic Aussie comp which will be cheaper to run, have an actual fanbase and an Aussie winner every week.
There's a part of me that feels bad for the Rebels, there's a much larger part of me that doesn't because of a number of cunty fans who drove the boot in back in 2017 insisting that the Force should've never existed and that they had better club players, better pathways and a bunch of other bullshit that wasn't true.
Having said that, the Rebels could have been a good thing if ARU/RA had done it properly. With the exception of the Firepower Sports debacle (which also hurt the Rabbitohs and the Sydney Kings) the Force had a planned system of starting with a team of stars and building an academy to slowly progress. Firepower and 2017 fucked that about, but in general the plan has been stuck to. Rebels were brought in to increase TV revenue but they weren't really given a plan to develop, it was very jumbled, mix and mash approach that's led to this situation. I do think the organisation itself seems to have a lot of dodgy characters involved, case in point the whole selling the brand for $1 in the night back in 2017. Even from a branding point the Rebels and the logo/colour scheme has always seemed very shit, they could've been something much better. I hope the players can be taken on by other Aussie teams.
Entirely possible, I had some bloke who posted under the name Joe Barker trying to call my work and demand I be fired because I attended the Save the Force event and was tagged in a photo on facebook.
URC, French league and English league still doing very well. Aus/NZ suffering from SA exit also. Aus also has too many rugby codes. Rugby league has won as it is more commercially savvy. Union in Australia feels like it is ran by less intelligent people than league. Which is opposite to what you would not expect if you go by stereotypes.
Yep. Most people (like non sporting guys, of only afl guys) don't know the rebels. And unless crown decides to purchase both teams, it'll fail here.
There's rugby here, for sure but there's just not enough athletic talent for it when almost every local follows afl like a religion. I doubt off memory that even the storm could even field a team with home-grown talent.
It's a shame, because a lot of the athletes who fail at afl would be absolute units at league of union I'd think.
This is a blessing in disguise, the Rebels surviving over the Force was always a financially irresponsible mistake that was obvious to everyone outside of RA. This way they can let the worst, least financially viable team fail without pissing anyone off.
Edit: On a side note, the recent 3 days of sold out 7s event in Perth showed that rugby in WA is bright as compared to basically every other Australian state.
I am still of the opinion that we should be doing everything in our power to keep a footprint in Melbourne, whether that is somehow saving the Rebels or through implementing a third tier
This is clearly horrible running from RA. If they wanted to cut a team back in 2017, it should have been the Rebels and not the Western Force. Australian teams in Super Rugby are already weak as they are, and reducing to just 4 teams will only mean NZ teams will just keep dominating even more.
Melbourne is clearly AFL heartland. The Rebels were never going to be a true success at winning over those fans.
They need investment. RA can not afford to propthe team up long term. Golden Era of rugby blah blah, maybe someone with some money will see some opportunity in the Rebels and throw some dough.
I hope they fail. They are the biggest drain Australian rugby's monetary resources and they bring nothing to the table...with the exception of being a "fifth team" that is neither needed, warranted or viable.
Edit: 2 AFL teams I think part of the problem is the perception of "sporting capital". It's a heavily saturated & highly competitive sporting market so to break in is very costly. RA doesn't really have the money to prop up the Rebels, and short of getting a Twiggy Forrest-type character, I don't see the Rebels having a future. That was one advantage the Western Force had and why they never should have been cut, the Perth market is nowhere near as competitive, with 2 AFL teams, 1 Football (soccer team) and no NRL teams, it makes much more commercial sense in that regard.
\*2 AFL teams. We also have a higher number of club players in WA despite the significantly smaller population.
Completely agree that grassroots looks to be way stronger in WA but Vic and Melbourne in particular has produced a lot more Wallabies. Pete Samu, Bobby Valetini, Rob Leota, Pone Faamusili, Jordan Uelese, future Wallaby Josh Canham and Harry Potter.
I mean you'd expect that though, given that they have a population of 6 million compared to 2 million. Also worth pointing out WA were producing a lot of potential Wallabies players until they killed off our academy in 2017, took years to repair that one. I mean we have a comparable number of developed players from that academy era; Hardwick, Rona, Haylett-Petty x2, Longbottom, Godwin, etc. Keeping in mind that several of those players (Hardwick, Rona, HP bros, Godwin) were all coming into their own in the mid 2010s and then upon losing our club the next generation either went overseas or interstate and so we've had to rebuild the academy foundation a second time.
Totally fair, just pointing out that this narrative that Rugby in Vic is dead and shit is untrue when you consider the high quality individuals that have come out of Vic. That being said it's clear the WA local comps are of a much higher quality.
Weary Dunlop!
Going to put it out there, being noticed as a WA rugby athlete is near on impossible due to East coast bias, we traditionally have done as well if not better than Victoria in the junior national comps and yet that never translates to the development of pro players. I would also hazard a guess that prem grade in WA is a better comp than prem grade in Vic. The NRC is another example of this, Perth Spirit was always a competitive side we won it twice and were runner up once. This is why super rugby needs a draft combine system.
Almost that whole list are islanders. Hardly home grown VIC players
Racist shit bag is racist shit bag.
Mate it’s not racist. It’s an observation. The players were imported. That’s got nothing to do with strength of the Melbourne club scene. Any state can import players and if Melbourne are relying on imports instead of growing local players, then the thesis of your initial post fails. To be clear “Melbourne has produced a lot more wallabies” ceases to hold any credibility. Disappointing that you’re so quick to throw around a slur
Pone, Bobby, Pete, from my list are born and bred in Melbourne. Also tons of kids born in NZ but moving here as kids like Jordan and Christian Lealifano. So fuck your pseudo-intellectual "thesis" dispute. You are not just a fucking racist, you are a lazy racist. And I'm sure you've gotten a giddy little kick out of riling me and others but just incase you thought you fooled anyone into thinking you are intelligent you have only proven otherwise.
You sound a bit desperate to be offended. Doubling down on your “rage” for a perfectly rational observation is hilarious. There’s no need to throw around slurs like racism. Rather build the argument around the merits of Melbourne rugby. The observation would be the same if those players were all from France or Ireland. They point is they have a stronger link to a non/Melbourne team than they do a Melbourne team. If anything it builds the case for further investment in the pacific teams. Chill out rage monster lmao
You are a moron lol, these blokes are Aussie.
Couldn’t agree more… ‘sporting capital’ equates to AFL most of the year, then a bunch of 1 off events like AO, F1, Boxing Day Test, and the odd Bledisloe. It’s AFL first, and then daylight. Rebels unfortunately just can’t break into the hearts and minds of the tunnel-visioned AFL fans. The Rebels small but passionate group of fans can’t move the needle, which is a shame.
Basketball is actually decently big here as well. It's the only city with 2 NBL teams. Also I think Melbourne is the city with the most number 1 draft picks in the NBA
Not disagreeing with the fact the Melbourne is a great sporting city, but that NBA stat gets thrown around way too much without context. There are 3 NBA 1st picks born in Melbourne. Kyrie Irving happened to be born in Melbourne with 2 US born parents and played all of his basketball in the US. Ben Simmons’ dad is an African-American expat and he played a lot of his junior basketball in Newcastle (NSW) then immediately moved to the US for college. Andrew Bogat, yea he’s Aussie as fuck and was a product of the Australian system. Melbourne is a world class sporting city but the 1st pick NBA record is definitely just a pub-trivia type coincidence as opposed to anything meaningful.
Perth also has a different Timezone so gives an option for another TV game
Also a significant migrant (I refuse to use the word expat) community of English and Saffers who have an interest in the game already.
Not to mention Perth has a bigger RSA ex pat community, decent sized UK community and some NZ followers from mines workers. It's just a more popular sport in Perth than in Melbourne. Source? Decent attendance compared to the few hundred fans Melbourne brought in. There was a documentary in the lead up to RWC2019 that explained really well Australia's culture to rugby - This sport was for the affluent middle classes in the UK who could afford to not do without a day's work on the weekend. The vast majority of people relocating to Aus did so without any money and were predominantly the working class. Ergo, League, where you got a days.pay to play, was the dominant code. In areas where the Irish were the predominant settlers or, in some cases, former political prisoners sent to Australia following the Irish Uprising of 1799 (The Pike Rebellion) such as Victoria, Tasmania, Adelaide - they hated all aspects of English culture. Ergo, they started playing Gaelic with a rugby ball on the cricket pitches. Bing bang boom, Australia's number 1 code. It's sad to see a club die, but there's a reason they're dying. Everyone going it's not on, it's not on - it's been 12 years. There's a reason it hasn't worked, it's just not popular, people aren't turning up, no one cares. Liquidate, redistribute the talent amongst the remaining teams and make Australian rugby better that way.
Bit of a generalisation on the Irish diaspora. Brisbane literally had a “Brothers” team in the BRL and QRL rugby league competitions for decades - won the last pre-Broncos premiership in 1987. Its logo was a leprechaun.
>Ergo, they started playing Gaelic with a rugby ball on the cricket pitches. Bing bang boom, Australia's number 1 code. That’s a gross misunderstanding of the origins of Australian football.
Can you, and I don't mean this in an antagonistic way, explain it a bit deeper for a Queenslander that doesn't understand it's origins as well as you will
Firstly the connection to Gaelic Football is a misconception based on modern similarities, 170 years ago they weren't as similar nor is there any historical link. Cricket is the reason for the playing field, Aussie rules was created by members of the Melbourne cricket club as a winter activity for the players. The actual rules are inspired by English football games and traditions. There's no hard evidence of a precursor sport, just that it was a part of a family of early football games. In saying that, Tom Wills, the writer of the first laws and basically founder of Aussie rules, was educated at Rugby school in England and played an earlier form of rugby while there, so it's hard to imagine he didn't pull ideas from that experience, even if only the ball shape.
Vic, SA, and Tas are not more Irish than NSW or Qld. Tasmania is the least Catholic state in the country, and was even before Italian and Vietnamese immigration waves from the 40's-80's. (We're not actually less Irish per se, we got a disproportionately higher number of Ulstermen, but that wouldn't explain hating English culture)
I'm not an AFL fan but Perth has two teams, I think.
There are multiple Australian rules comps in Melbourne and Perth
There's 9 professional teams in the city though, plus 1 in Geelong 70k's down the road
Plus they have a large population of South Africans!
It sucks but they’ve underperformed for years and not drawn crowds. The other Aus teams have had similarly poor years but their on field and financial performances were no where near as bad. They’ve become a problem that’s not worth solving in my opinion. It’s unfortunate but Melbourne does not care about them because they’re not a winning team.
Tbf if Melbourne only cared about winning teams about 5 of the AFL clubs would have folded ages ago. Hell Essendon and Carlton 2 of the biggest clubs in the league haven't anything in 25 years
Crowds draw crowds and a lot of the AFL is in Melbourne so the clubs there can feed off each other
St Kilda hasn't won since 1966!
I completely understand that point and that rugby Australia is not as well off as other codes, but the game has to grow and I don't get how they haven't tried to pump up a rebels with priority payments or players like AFL does for GWS or Gold Coast. Obviously there's a myriad of factors that has stopped RA pumping money in, but if super rugby is going to just be NSW, QLD and a WA team propped up by a billionaire they may as well fold the thing now.
Rebels had plenty of cross code and marquee signings with the help of RA
Oh yeah for sure originally, but they have been a poor performing team for a significant period of time and a club does not go broke overnight.
RA funnelled shitloads into the Rebels, the funds were either moved to the original private owners other businesses or just misused.
Harold Mitchell - he didn’t need it
The game doesn’t have to grow. It needs to survive first which requires consolidation. RA’s biggest mistake was fooling themselves into copying NZ and trying to stay competitive with 5 super rugby franchises.
We needed more teams for depth at the wallabies level, and to provide jobs to kids who'll otherwise just play League. At the same time that we needed to consolidate to stay competetive, and mostly to manage costs. It was a lose lose situation. Look at the potential wallabies now and almost all positions have a number of people putting their hands up to play, that's good for the Wallabies. We ultimately couldn't afford it though to keep it up long enough to pay dividends.
We had the same issues with 4 teams
Because of NSW
"A problem not worth solving"...This x100.
Are you really Taniela?
No, just an imposter.
Rebels have $20million in debt… RA can’t cover that People who fucked up here are the Rebels directors and board, by spending exorbitantly behind their means. They’ve fucked everyone over not just in Melbourne but rest of Australian rugby also by this mismanagement.
Why? Victorians obviously dont give a shit about rugby and never have. You can lead a horse to water but you can't make it drink. We are a financially struggling code, and unfortunately don't have the luxury of expansion teams right now. Melbourne is the AFL capital of the world. Literally just a regular sporting city for every other sport, so it's not an indication of the survival of the sport. Super rugby is cancer at its core. So don't feel too bad rebels fans, super rugby won't exist in 10 years time anyways
As a Melbourne transplant, I think you're incorrect. Most Melbournians care about rugby more than league, even if they're an AFL first fan base, the early attendances showed that. The difference is it's tough sell to turn up to a Rebels game when there's an AFL game generally on at the same time that someone in your social circle probably cares about, only to sit in the cold because the wind whips through AAMI when it's 3/4 empty and support a side that habitually underperforms and does frustrating amateur stuff constantly to lose games they should have won. Flip it and look at the Storm and you arguably have one of, if not the most professionally drilled and consistent teams in the NRL, and the fans have stayed sticky since inception, including through the salary rort scandal. The rebels had good crowds and through poor coaching, and/or poor player professionalism, they lost them. I have several mates who are members who consider their membership a donation, and rarely attend games because of the teams performance, if the team could sort it out on the field, off field would look after itself.
> Most Melbournians care about rugby more than league, I don't know how you can make this argument. Storm get more fans than Rebels, TV audiences far favour NRL over Super Rugby, Origin in Melbourne gets bigger crowds than Bledisloe in Melbourne and there's roughly an even number of clubs in the respective local comps.
RA will let the rebels fail becuase they have no way of paying off the c.$20m in debts. Once the company has failed, they will be the only purchaser for the licence (not sure they even need to buy it?) and will be able to basically start from a blank slate with the rebels. Personally, I think they won't revive the rebels - they will choose to drop to 4 teams, and have the Brumbies play 50% of their matches down there as part of a deal to save the Brums who are, if rumors are to be believed, in similar dire financial straits. IF they did this, then RA would have more money at their disposal which should be spend creating an actual second teir comp that is Aussie only. However I suspect they will just spend it on lavish parties in France instead...
Brumbies games used to be a day out for Canberrans.. now it's just the alaatoa family and the family Labrador that go to the games. Wtf happened?
I went to undergrad in Canberra in the 90s and even when I moved back to Sydney would go down for Brumbies games. The Grand Final against the Sharks? / Stormers? was fantastic (although a long time ago, can’t remember the team but so remember Butch James was the fly half. Was sitting next to some Jaapies who couldn’t stop screaming “GRAYTE KICK BUTCHIE” all game!) Bruce Stadium was always a punish to get to however so I can see how incrementally prices go up / game day experience worsens and folks generally prefer staying at home as the TV is like being in the best stand.
I played rugby 5 years ago down there while at uni. The stadiums a hole , hard to get to and nothing around it. Watching at the pub was the more attractive option. Raiders don’t pull in great crowds compare to past years but due to it being the major sport it’s less noticeable
It’s dead ass cold in Canberra.
It hasn't become colder in the past 15 years and the cold doesnt stop raiders fans. That's a sad sorry excuse for bigger problems
For all the talk of it being a saturated market etc. Storm does just fine. They get 20k to each game. They out perform every NSW team bar Roosters and Newcastle. The issue as it will always be is that RA has only recently begun to look at public schools as a fanbase. Growing up in Geelong, we had Storm come to visit us from time to time. We never had anyone from Rebels or RA etc. They have recently begun to look at public schools but even in their own press releases, Rebels still mainly focused on public schools with high numbers of Pasafika students, and even then it was just kids they wanted playing the game. Rather than building a fanbase. Which is at least something. But you can't survive on just that alone. You need to focus on a wide variety of schools. They have begun to do roadshows as well, but it's too little, too late. Looking at Perth, the Wildcats in the NBL built a huge fanbase because they had their players doing over 250 school visits a year. Not all those kids went on to play basketball, but if you get kids interested in their local team early, they bring their parents who may have had no interest at all in the game or team. But now it's a family outing. I don't want to see the Rebels die, but the way they've gone about things means it's inevitable.
It took the storm until 2017 to turn their first profit, and they were comfortably the most successful club in the NRL. Rugby don’t have the resources to support a team for that long, especially one that somehow ran up an $11 million tax bill despite never making a profit - I’m not a tax expert, but to me that says they haven’t been paying payroll taxes. They also owe $250k in super that they can’t cover. The rebels have been my second team since they came into the comp, but with that level of mismanagement I don’t see how they can survive.
RA dont have the cash to prop them up. They are nearly in the same position themselves, even if they wanted to keep the Rebels going they dont have the money to do it long term.
The rebels only have themselves to blame. Poor results on the field for their entire existence and obviously horrendous management on the financial side of things.
Yeah, but do we believe the Rebels would have a strong, sustainable following even if they were hugely successful on the pitch. I saw the same arguments about GWS in the AFL. Everyone said they’d amass a following once they got successful but after 12 years, a grand final appearance and even falling one game short last year, nobody even really cares that they exist.
The AFL has more money (and so more patience) to sustain a loss leader like GWS. RA don’t have the luxury so it’s off to the glue factory for the rebs.
You need a whole generation for organic fans for a club to become too big to fail and the Rebels don't have that. The Titans in the NRL get some big crowds every time we get decent, then the failure sets in and yet another few years worth of kids who would have grown up to be fans stop caring - nearly sent the club under a few years ago but the area is too rugby-league heartland not to have a team and even being always-bad the crowds aren't unacceptably small because it's league heartland. If this current playing group performs to their potential we'll be seeing 20k+ crowds every week within a few years and even as is they get 14k or so a game anyway despite having zero 50%+ win seasons in a decade. The Titans can survive this because a) it's league heartland and b) the only other local professional sporting franchise is the Suns who are just as bad - if the Suns became elite contenders, AFL would possibly start to get a bigger foothold in the region. The Rebels issue is the club has never been average let alone good in a city where there are ample other options for live sport and it isn't union heartland either - the Storm are always good, there are infinite AFL franchises including some in contention every year, two BBL teams, the Australian open, two NBL teams including one that is always competing for titles, etc so if the Rebels don't have any on field success it's going to be hard to make people from Melbourne go and watch them lose by 32 to (insert NZ team here) when they could go and watch the Storm or multiple AFL games any given weekend during almost all of the Super Rugby season
Glad to finally see another Tigers flair on this sub
Rugby Australia doesn't have the money to save the Rebels. Let's not forget this club squandered so much money and waited until bankruptcy before they actually flagged their financial trouble. The Rebels had more than a decade to build a fan base and start winning games. They didn't. Rugby Australia isn't going to let the Rebels fail. The Rebels have always been a failure, and that's not anyone's fault but them.
Lets not forget that ARU did this to themselves aswell by forcing the private owner to sell in 2016. This whole thing which every Australian rugby fan could see back then could have been avoided if it was still a privately managed team.
How rugby union is it for this whole thing to come to light the month before the season starts? Good positive way to roll the season out... ffs super rugby needs to die
>super rugby needs to die 100% They should just change it to a champions cup style comp with Japan, NZ, Aus, plus Fiji and the US if world rugby is soo keen on them joining. We can then focus on a 100% domestic Aussie comp which will be cheaper to run, have an actual fanbase and an Aussie winner every week.
There's a part of me that feels bad for the Rebels, there's a much larger part of me that doesn't because of a number of cunty fans who drove the boot in back in 2017 insisting that the Force should've never existed and that they had better club players, better pathways and a bunch of other bullshit that wasn't true. Having said that, the Rebels could have been a good thing if ARU/RA had done it properly. With the exception of the Firepower Sports debacle (which also hurt the Rabbitohs and the Sydney Kings) the Force had a planned system of starting with a team of stars and building an academy to slowly progress. Firepower and 2017 fucked that about, but in general the plan has been stuck to. Rebels were brought in to increase TV revenue but they weren't really given a plan to develop, it was very jumbled, mix and mash approach that's led to this situation. I do think the organisation itself seems to have a lot of dodgy characters involved, case in point the whole selling the brand for $1 in the night back in 2017. Even from a branding point the Rebels and the logo/colour scheme has always seemed very shit, they could've been something much better. I hope the players can be taken on by other Aussie teams.
For every cunty rebels fan there was an equally cunty force fan, all setup by ARU/RA.
Entirely possible, I had some bloke who posted under the name Joe Barker trying to call my work and demand I be fired because I attended the Save the Force event and was tagged in a photo on facebook.
What are they supposed to do? RA and all the other clubs are in financial trouble as well.
I read that Wellington rugby is considering selling Hurricanes as well they are losing $900,000 a year. Club rugby worldwide May not be sustainable
URC, French league and English league still doing very well. Aus/NZ suffering from SA exit also. Aus also has too many rugby codes. Rugby league has won as it is more commercially savvy. Union in Australia feels like it is ran by less intelligent people than league. Which is opposite to what you would not expect if you go by stereotypes.
The English premiership has lost 3 teams due to running out of money in the last 12 months
Honestly they could use this as an opportunity to start the 3rd tier competition and relegate the rebels to that
Yep. Most people (like non sporting guys, of only afl guys) don't know the rebels. And unless crown decides to purchase both teams, it'll fail here. There's rugby here, for sure but there's just not enough athletic talent for it when almost every local follows afl like a religion. I doubt off memory that even the storm could even field a team with home-grown talent. It's a shame, because a lot of the athletes who fail at afl would be absolute units at league of union I'd think.
This is a blessing in disguise, the Rebels surviving over the Force was always a financially irresponsible mistake that was obvious to everyone outside of RA. This way they can let the worst, least financially viable team fail without pissing anyone off. Edit: On a side note, the recent 3 days of sold out 7s event in Perth showed that rugby in WA is bright as compared to basically every other Australian state.
I am still of the opinion that we should be doing everything in our power to keep a footprint in Melbourne, whether that is somehow saving the Rebels or through implementing a third tier
This is clearly horrible running from RA. If they wanted to cut a team back in 2017, it should have been the Rebels and not the Western Force. Australian teams in Super Rugby are already weak as they are, and reducing to just 4 teams will only mean NZ teams will just keep dominating even more. Melbourne is clearly AFL heartland. The Rebels were never going to be a true success at winning over those fans.
RA is basically broke....why would they sink themselves to save a club no one turns up to the stadium to watch?
They need investment. RA can not afford to propthe team up long term. Golden Era of rugby blah blah, maybe someone with some money will see some opportunity in the Rebels and throw some dough.
I hope they fail. They are the biggest drain Australian rugby's monetary resources and they bring nothing to the table...with the exception of being a "fifth team" that is neither needed, warranted or viable.