Can you name any national sport around the world that doesn't have a team in the nations capital? There might be some in USA with all their swapping cities but I literally can't think of any others.
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Can you name any national sport around the world that doesn't have a team in the nations capital? There might be some in USA with all their swapping cities but I literally can't think of any others.
Lol yeh touch footy has nothing to do with rugby league. Good one. What next, AFL 9's has nothing to do with AFL?
Australia is pretty unique in that we are a small country yet have 4 football codes competing against each other. Add to that our Capitol city is tiny in comparison to other states capitals
Canberra is not like London, Canberra is just a trade off between Sydney and Melbourne, just a matter of time before the PM lives fulltime at Kirribilli, quite frankly Canberra is a joke and probably should never have been built.
Canberra is not a RL town anyway, Canberra is a mish mash of football codes, the surrounding areas of Canberra ( albeit in NSW ) are RL areas, QBY, Goulburn, Yass and the smaller rural hamlets are where most of the junior RL teams come from in the CDJRL anyway.
So no?
Some decent players out of Newcastle, the crowd at NEAFL games is not the point, the point is the pathway.
Isaac Heeney ATM is seen as a pretty big thing ATM in junior circles.
The pathway lol. No one from any other sydney club would go an play at east coast or sydney uni just to play neafl for the "pathway". All it does it provides the swans and gws reserves with someone to beat every week.
Rampe showed that premier div sydney footy is enough to make it into the afl, none of this neafl s**t at east coast or sydney uni.
finders
Norm Smith Medallist
But But! it aint national if it dosent have a team in EVERY State Capital or play games there and atm it dosent.
RL should be looking at Fiji and Tonga seeing a lot of their players come from those backgrounds and another club in NZ.
The way i understand it, Rampe moved to Melbourne to improve his game ( 3 years), came back and has since played in the NEAFL, that is what i would call a pathway.
finders
Norm Smith Medallist
But the AFL play games there and thats all that counts Canberra is way too small to have its own team same goes for Hobart.
AliceCat
Team Captain
never more serious.
You actually have evidence that league is going backwards? I want links people, not evangelism. Canberra is an AFl town? on what basis. Last time i looked, crowds were almost identical for AFL and NRL matches (actually after checking in 2013 the Raiders averaged 10k to GWS 8.3k), and the Raiders were financially very well off. Raiders members compare favourably to GWS canberra members. Trading water in Queensland? The Broncos are hands down the biggest club in Queensland of any code, not to mention actually profitable.
The Broncos have done pretty well over the years. A second Brisbane side in the NRL, with the coming Rugby Union Championship could kill the Lions for a while if they dont pick up soon.
Ive pulled the figures for both Rugby league and AFL NT for a thread on Talking footy, with the inclusion of Touch Footy now, the numbers in the territory are pretty damn even. - http://www.footyindustry.com/?page_id=200
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According to the NRLs 2013 annual report, rugby league in the northern territory features 2,112 players in 102 teams in 15 clubs.
According to AFL Northern Territory it has 5,497 people playing senior club football, with the number blowing out to 9464 when junior and youth clubs are taken into account. This number does not include school football (another 13,700), Auskick (abnother 4,700) or nine a side.
So what about Touch and Oztag? Bearing in mind that the NRL is now formally affiliated with Touch Football, it bears consideration
The Touch Foootball Association 2013 annual report (pg 24) puts touch figures at 2,342. According to its website Oztag has no presence in the NT - and while negotiations are apparently underway to affliate, according to this article in the Telegraph - currently considers itself a separate sport.
School figures could not be found either in the NRL Annual Report, or the NTFL 2013-2017 Strategic plan, or in recent State of the Game documents from the NRL. The ARL did not include them separately in Annual reports as far as I can tell.
With Touch included in school league figures, Id expect league figures to run very close to the Australian football ones in the NT if not be higher.
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In case you guys have forgotten, Im an AFL man through and through, but some of the posts here recently are fanatical, to say the least.
I know your AFL through and through and we love your work but I'm just calling it how i see it…don't see how anything i said above was that earth shattering.
Anyways in regards to the NT rugby league is going backwards despite what any figures might say. They'll only have three clubs here this year down from four the year before. All clubs struggle big time for numbers and receive bugger all sponsorship..more of a social comp a la AFL9's. A bunch of 50yr old guys playing with a few 15yrs olds. That it contrast to a strong and growing Aussie Rules comp with 3 divisions. Plus the Redtails (Alice team to compete in the NTFL) is about to get off the ground if not this summer, next. They've already got $750,000 worth of sponsorship ready to go.
Darwin is the same in regards to leagues relevance..and they're just about to leave their premier facility as they can't afford the council rates. They're going backwards. The only guys that play are the guys in the defence force.
Touch in the territory interestingly enough is pretty big but is primarly a women's sport with no affliction with any of the league clubs.
Its more AFL territory up here than down south if thats possible. No idea how the figures could be even close to even!!! Sounds like some creative counting to me. Its like saying that the AFL is even with league in Western Sydney.
Anyone who doubts the AFLs absolute dominance up here in the NT should come up here for a quick browse! Your welcome anytime!
Rally
All Australian
On Facebook, the NRL has 708k likes while the AFL page has 601k. Just wondering what people make of these figures? I find it surprising, it seems to be one of the only barometers the NRL has a genuine upper hand. Perhaps there's an international influence?
Aucklander
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The game is played right around the country. It is by all intents and purposes a Nationally played game so it has every right to have a National comp for those players. Just because a few AFL fans think it's wrong doesn't make them right.
You've been going so well lately too.
- Aug 11, 2012
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It's the biggest city without a team, sure. But Canberra isn't a big city. Probably only just has enough to warrant being called a city. Canberra is pretty content with 4 games a year (3 H&A). We don't really deserve too much more than that in 2014.
The reason for this simply put into 1 word - Demographics.
For example on Twitter, different trend in demographics from Facebook. AFL wins 215k to 159k.
kaypee
All Australian
I
I don't think much of league as a game and believe that's why it hasn't grown outside its heartland. But even then I think the reason Adelaide, tassie, Perth and Timbuktu are probably hard for the nrl to expand in to is because the game has little to no grass roots support in those areas. I lived in cairns for a few years and Australian football up there is entenched at grass roots even though nrl is the more popular TV game that packs out the pubs.
I think I meant no point expanding AFL or NEL teams to areas where there are no local leagues. That why grass roots should start first, then a professional team follow, in my view.I would have to disagree with that, this is one of the main reasons why RL people tend to have a very big chip on the shoulder when the word (initials
They can spew out words like zealots, missionaries etc etc, when talking about AF fans but the real fact of the matter is many people who follow the National game have no qualms about getting down and dirty and attempt to grow the game, no matter where they are, because they have confidence in what they follow, and it is not a new found confidence.
That positive attitude ( in general) has seen the game grow in the most un AFL places in the country, like the Darling Downs, Cairns, FNQ in general and even in Newcastle recently.
I don't think much of league as a game and believe that's why it hasn't grown outside its heartland. But even then I think the reason Adelaide, tassie, Perth and Timbuktu are probably hard for the nrl to expand in to is because the game has little to no grass roots support in those areas. I lived in cairns for a few years and Australian football up there is entenched at grass roots even though nrl is the more popular TV game that packs out the pubs.
You can't say that a team in the capital is important when said capital is nothing more than an administrative enclave artificially created because the principal two cities couldn't see eye to eye.
Even the Washington Redskins actually play in Maryland.
Oy vey.
Edit: End of the day, there are only five population hubs worth a damn in Aus, the 1m+ capitals of the major states. These are the meat and two veg for the media and the wheels of government; everything else, be it Gold Coast, Canberra, Hobart, Townsville, what have you, is a luxury item. Now that's two out of the big five markets, about 3m people, that have not been catered to by the NRL for near on two decades, and this is the very heart of why the NRL is not getting more out of their TV rights deals.
Well, that and Ch9/Fox treachery, but mostly the above.
Even the Washington Redskins actually play in Maryland.
Oy vey.
Edit: End of the day, there are only five population hubs worth a damn in Aus, the 1m+ capitals of the major states. These are the meat and two veg for the media and the wheels of government; everything else, be it Gold Coast, Canberra, Hobart, Townsville, what have you, is a luxury item. Now that's two out of the big five markets, about 3m people, that have not been catered to by the NRL for near on two decades, and this is the very heart of why the NRL is not getting more out of their TV rights deals.
Well, that and Ch9/Fox treachery, but mostly the above.
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Have a mate in Darwin, who has been there over a year, so knows the lay of the land, who says pretty much the same thing.
Considering the NTAFL plays when its cricket season down South, i have been a advocate of Fox picking up a game or 2 of NT footy and telecasting it, plenty of Ex AFL and other good players head North for the season, combined with the locals, it makes for quite entertaining football.
Have a mate in Darwin, who has been there over a year, so knows the lay of the land, who says pretty much the same thing.
Considering the NTAFL plays when its cricket season down South, i have been a advocate of Fox picking up a game or 2 of NT footy and telecasting it, plenty of Ex AFL and other good players head North for the season, combined with the locals, it makes for quite entertaining football.
Stewies Power
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Very informative, cheers for that. Great to see footy continue to grow in the NT!
Stewies Power
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Fb likes really aren't a very good indication of how popular a league or club is. The nrl see fb as a way to look bigger than the AFL, hence why they actively advertise their page on it. The AFL don't. The Storm have more likes than every afl club, yet are smaller than every afl club in terms of crowds and memberships. Anyone who thinks fb likes is a true indication of popularity is an idiot.
Facebook likes are more of an awareness thing than anything else, and certainly should not be considered a gauge of degree of interest. What it does do for the NRL, though, is give them a nice big list of recipients to push updates out to, which is handy.
Just thought i would link a speech by David Hill ( 2012), a ex president of the now defunct RL club North Sydney, backs up my point regarding the softening of RL in Sydney, the world home of RL.
For decades we have been witnessing a corrosion of Leagues traditional support base, which was historically strongest in the now declining blue collar work force.
Nowhere has the decline in the traditional League heartland been more apparent than in the Sydney junior leagues, which have historically been the big nursery for the senior clubs.
When I became President of the North Sydney Bears in the early nineties, I was struck by the decline in the number of teams in the district since I played North Sydney Juniors. But since then there has been a further drop of about twenty five per cent in the number of teams for above 15 year olds. In my playing days there were dozens of teams then playing for such clubs like Mosman Collegians, and my old club Crow’s Nest, which have both totally disappeared. Now there is very little junior league played south of Chatswood.
And this trend cannot be dismissed as being simply the result of the gentrification of the formerly working class suburbs of Sydney’s lower north shore.
There has also been a fall in the number of junior clubs in heartland of the western suburbs. For example, in the 1970’s the Penrith district boasted 32 junior league clubs. It now has 22. **
http://sportsbusinessinsider.com.au...-pokie-politics-and-parental-angst-take-toll/
** Penrith junior league now has 21 clubs.
For decades we have been witnessing a corrosion of Leagues traditional support base, which was historically strongest in the now declining blue collar work force.
Nowhere has the decline in the traditional League heartland been more apparent than in the Sydney junior leagues, which have historically been the big nursery for the senior clubs.
When I became President of the North Sydney Bears in the early nineties, I was struck by the decline in the number of teams in the district since I played North Sydney Juniors. But since then there has been a further drop of about twenty five per cent in the number of teams for above 15 year olds. In my playing days there were dozens of teams then playing for such clubs like Mosman Collegians, and my old club Crow’s Nest, which have both totally disappeared. Now there is very little junior league played south of Chatswood.
And this trend cannot be dismissed as being simply the result of the gentrification of the formerly working class suburbs of Sydney’s lower north shore.
There has also been a fall in the number of junior clubs in heartland of the western suburbs. For example, in the 1970’s the Penrith district boasted 32 junior league clubs. It now has 22. **
http://sportsbusinessinsider.com.au...-pokie-politics-and-parental-angst-take-toll/
** Penrith junior league now has 21 clubs.
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AliceCat
Team Captain
Surprisingly high standard of footy the NTAFL. Can't wait till the red tails are admitted! After an 8 game trial last year the only thing stoping full admission this summer is the simple fact that we don't have enough footy ovals in Alice. Hopefully upgrading the uni oval this yr and well be in the big league 2015/16.
The match of the round is on ABC each week and wouldn't look outa place on fox over the summer.
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For those playing at home, look at the regional numbers for Fridays live FTA game, against the metro. its almost 1:1, and the delayed game is even more favourable to the country folk.
Can you name another country in the world where the capital city makes up less then 2% of the countries population?
what does being the capital of a country have to do with anything anyway? FFS you are just looking at ways to diminish football as the most popular sport in this country. It holds as much water as the more than 50% of Australia's population live in Qld and NSW.
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