Rugby poll -thoughts

[chickenfeet2003]

A 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

Comments

[gillo]

I'd say I am not exactly typical of Brits in general, as the only reasons I am at all aware of rugby are that I work in a rugby-playing school and have family members who played. I follow rugby more than most other sports, but that is not saying a lot. Six Nations is on TV, and I notice the results. Standard league rugby union isn't, so much, so I don't. So you can't really take me as evidence for the state of the game in general. The same may apply to others who voted...

[chickenfeet2003]

I disagree with you. You are part of an important demographic. If you consider the analogy with soccer, it's highly unlikely that you would find many people who had some sense of how England were doing but no awareness at all of how their local Premiership/League team was faring. The trouble with rugby is that it has dismally failed (in Europe) to develop a level of club or regional competition that anybody much cares about. Look at the attendance figures for club games, pathetic!

[gillo]

Heck, my local team is Cov City. I assume they're doing badly but have no idea whatsoever where they are in whatever division/league etc they are in. I really know nothing about football either except that Chelsea are owned by a rich Mafioso Russian 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?

[chickenfeet2003]

Sport-phobic females aren't that vital a demographic are they?

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).

[violetsaunders]

I'm with gillo here - I only get dragged into sport when members of my family (or the BBCetc news) make it impossible for me to avoid it (generally by the noise!) - so my response isn't an 'informed' one, in any meaningful sense. I have a vague idea that somewhere behind the scenes big media deals clearly influence what I might or might not accidentally hear about - but little more than that.

Now if more LJ users were men (and not from California) .....................

[chickenfeet2003]

Oddly enough, California is a hotbed of women's rugby so that may not be such an issue.

[violetsaunders]

Hmm - could definitely be played to LJ strengths then - but you might need to cross rugby with Firefly fanfic writing to be sure of a massive LJ audience. That might make an interteresting plot for a story?

[chickenfeet2003]

Certainly F/F slash would likely appeal to American women rugby players.

[pshtaku]

On the soccer thing, I don't even know which league my local team play in, let alone their position, or likelihood of relegation.

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!

[chickenfeet2003]

When I have a choice on commentary I'll just listen to the ref's mike. That's far more informative than anything else. I find when I watch TV with the regular commentary I find myself listening to the commentator making some stupid blunder and shouting at the TV along the lines of "the ref's been indicating advantage for the last three phases you daft prat!"

[pshtaku]

yup - which is why I listen to Radio - that and the Ref's mike sometime doesn't work on Sky.

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!

[chickenfeet2003]

I'm astonished by how bad the commentators are. In particular they don't seem to keep abreast of IRB law rulings. So often one hears them snarking at the ref unfairly when all the ref is doing is enforcing the latest (sometimes rather odd) IRB interpretation.

[livredor]

Agree with lots of the other commentators. I don't really follow rugby except by the most generous interpretation your very loose definition of "follow". But I think I do fit your hypothesis. I am vaguely aware of the Six Nations competition, but I know nothing at all about club level rugby, and finding out would take fairly significant commitment. I also don't pay attention to southern hemisphere rugby, though I might at least notice an England v New Zealand game or similar

[badasstronaut]

Well, that's not entirely true. I know there's a weird shaped ball and I know it has something to do with trigonometry. And I once taught Darryl Gibson, and he's supposedly famous for rugby.