NRL cops a kicking in the battle of the codes

[cos789]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/c ... 5886874234

LEAGUE has taken a battering from AFL in the latest sports participation survey and the biggest star to switch codes hasn't even left the NRL.
Figures from the Australian Sports Commission show that, for the first time ever, Australian rules has beaten rugby league in the battle to sign up new members on league's home turf in NSW.

The news could hardly have come at a worse time for league administrators with one of its biggest stars, Israel Folau, due to switch to AFL at the end of this season and a Greater Western Sydney AFL team entering the competition in 2012.

University of NSW sports participation researcher, Dr Clifton Evers, said public perception of league as a more violent game meant people were seeking other sports.

The Folau coup is strategic, with AFL officials hoping his arrival will create a path for Polynesians to join the code, rather than league or union.

Dr Evers said, while it was younger people who most often participated in sport, their parents were the ones who decided what they would play.

"It is more of a concern for parents than children, but there is the belief that contact in rugby union and rugby league is more intense than in AFL, even though AFL can be radically forceful," he said.

"It's not necessarily that the kids don't like the sport, it's because they go into the sports that the parents put them into. You'll find that is also why soccer is more popular."

According to the Exercise, Recreation and Sport Survey, the AFL attracted 36,400 new NSW members from 2007-2009. Hammered by a membership downturn in 2008 during the global financial crisis, rugby league could only manage an increase of 33,700 in the same period.League chiefs will be worried by the surge in AFL memberships in NSW, which have risen from 9300 in 2007 to more than 45,000 in 2009.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said administrators were happy with his sport's growth across NSW.

"It's a long, slow process but we're making good progress," he said.

"I haven't seen the survey but we are certainly not the dominant code and we're a long way from it. However, we're working hard to build the profile of the game and we're taking some good steps."

It is understood the AFL has a war chest of $100 million to support the sport in the Western Suburbs.

[Topper]

Figures from the Australian Sports Commission show that, for the first time ever, Australian rules has beaten rugby league in the battle to sign up new members on league's home turf in NSW.

This is significant, even when it has to be considered that the Sports Commission wouldn't have taken into account that the NRL figures are actually Leagues Club memberships.

[Raiderdave]

http://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/news/c ... 5886874234

LEAGUE has taken a battering from AFL in the latest sports participation survey and the biggest star to switch codes hasn't even left the NRL.
Figures from the Australian Sports Commission show that, for the first time ever, Australian rules has beaten rugby league in the battle to sign up new members on league's home turf in NSW.

The news could hardly have come at a worse time for league administrators with one of its biggest stars, Israel Folau, due to switch to AFL at the end of this season and a Greater Western Sydney AFL team entering the competition in 2012.

University of NSW sports participation researcher, Dr Clifton Evers, said public perception of league as a more violent game meant people were seeking other sports.

The Folau coup is strategic, with AFL officials hoping his arrival will create a path for Polynesians to join the code, rather than league or union.

Dr Evers said, while it was younger people who most often participated in sport, their parents were the ones who decided what they would play.

"It is more of a concern for parents than children, but there is the belief that contact in rugby union and rugby league is more intense than in AFL, even though AFL can be radically forceful," he said.

"It's not necessarily that the kids don't like the sport, it's because they go into the sports that the parents put them into. You'll find that is also why soccer is more popular."

According to the Exercise, Recreation and Sport Survey, the AFL attracted 36,400 new NSW members from 2007-2009. Hammered by a membership downturn in 2008 during the global financial crisis, rugby league could only manage an increase of 33,700 in the same period.League chiefs will be worried by the surge in AFL memberships in NSW, which have risen from 9300 in 2007 to more than 45,000 in 2009.

AFL spokesman Patrick Keane said administrators were happy with his sport's growth across NSW.

"It's a long, slow process but we're making good progress," he said.

"I haven't seen the survey but we are certainly not the dominant code and we're a long way from it. However, we're working hard to build the profile of the game and we're taking some good steps."

It is understood the AFL has a war chest of $100 million to support the sport in the Western Suburbs.

this type of AFL article rebuked .. for the utter rubbish they are
http://asiancorrespondent.com/54477/wha ... rn-sydney/

The highest profile competition of Australia’s indigenous code of football, the AFL, recently hit the jackpot with a $1.25 billion television deal that will ensure the code’s future for years to come.

It’s interesting, however, to have a closer look at some of the claims the code made just before the deal was done.

In particular, this article in the Sydney Morning Herald contains some very strange claims:

With the winter junior sport season starting across Sydney this morning, AFL NSW/ACT says junior Australian rules numbers have doubled for under-12s since 2005, from 41,807 to 85,154 last year…

In rugby league, 38,119 juniors signed up to play last year.

The suggestion that appears to come out of this article that twice as many kids in NSW play AFL under 12s than all age groups in rugby league is beyond ridiculous.
In the Sutherland Shire, for example, there are more than 250 junior rugby league teams including 19 under 12 teams.

By comparison, there are only four under 12 Aussie Rules teams in the same area, with the kids having to travel to St George and Bankstown to make up a competition – and these are areas where rugby league is equally dominant over a code known universally **** the kids as “Gay FL”.

Most telling of all, the AFL is not setting the world alight in western Sydney, the area where the AFL has invested millions of dollars to recruit young new fans, with representatives visiting schools across the region offering bags of merchandise to kids who sign up.

The western Sydney AFL junior competition for under 12s has 24 teams, taking in a huge sweep of western Sydney, and there is no under 11 competition.

Going through the junior rugby league tables in the same regions of Penrith, Parramatta and western Sydney, there are 107 under 12 junior rugby league teams and more again in an under 11 competition - that the AFL is not catering for.

By now you should be getting some kind of sense that any suggestion there are twice as many under 12s playing AFL in NSW than all the kids playing rugby league is not quite correct.

There is some evidence that AFL is being adopted by the kids of worried mums in more affluent areas of central and northern Sydney, which is the heartland of rugby union.

However, the death of rugby league in Sydney has been exaggerated, and the millions invested in western Sydney by the AFL have so far been wasted.



gee the Maths don't seem to add up here .. do they ?

this is the type of thing the AFL... try on

moronic lap dogs like cos789 .. swallow it all up .. not a thought of questioning it at all
they actually believe
that there are twice the number of AR players in NSW as there are RL players ... seems to me that'd be an odd thing to claim in the first place ... as its quite obviously false
& an even odder thing to believe if one had half a brain
oh well ... thats explained it where cuzzy is concerned

[Topper]

And all we get from the opposition is yet another burp.

[cos789]

And all we get from the opposition is yet another burp.

I call it the "King Canute" approroach.

Seemingly the authourity is an "Asian correspondant". Diabolical.

[Raiderdave]

And all we get from the opposition is yet another burp.

I call it the "King Canute" approroach.

Seemingly the authourity is an "Asian correspondant". Diabolical.

yep

even asians won't swallow the bulltripe .. the AFL serves up
they're good at maths asians

you could imagine a little asian bloke sitting there trying to work it out
how can you have 86K U12 players ... dats widiculous

fwucking wiars .......

[cos789]

you could imagine a little asian bloke ...

NO.

[Topper]

Imagination is the whole problem! It's not just King Canute. It's the Emporer's New Clothes!

[Raiderdave]

Imagination is the whole problem! It's not just King Canute. It's the Emporer's New Clothes!

you need bucket loads to believe the bull honkey the AFL serves up

bucket loads

[Topper]

Represented by burps from a burp machine.

[NSWAFL]

Imagination is the whole problem! It's not just King Canute. It's the Emporer's New Clothes!

you need bucket loads to believe the bull honkey the AFL serves up

bucket loads

Well on this occasion it happens to be true. Asian Correspondent? What would that publication know about AFL memberships?

[ParraEelsNRL]

Vickykicky counting ausvickykicky as usual, any school that has 1 clinic gets added, and not just the kids that touch the ball, the whole farking school does.

[NSWAFL]

Not true, Parra, not true at all.

[ParraEelsNRL]

Yes it is.

I live in the Gong and you said that Nowra has a thriving AFL league in another thread.

Did you know that in order for Nowra to play AFL, they have to play teams from as far away as North of Wollongong?

Do you know how far that is away from Nowra? Then there's Batemans bay and all the others, they all play in the Illawarra comp, yet they are not part of the Illawarra lol.

Don't bullshit to me about AFL player numbers in regional NSW.

[Raiderdave]

Imagination is the whole problem! It's not just King Canute. It's the Emporer's New Clothes!

you need bucket loads to believe the bull honkey the AFL serves up

bucket loads

Well on this occasion it happens to be true. Asian Correspondent? What would that publication know about AFL memberships?

more then you n cuzzy do apparently