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Auckland- a league town?

Bedfordshire Bronco

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hunsletgreenandgold

hunsletgreenandgold

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12 minutes ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

A friend is convinced league is the bigger code in Auckland? 

Any truth in it? 

Where in NZ is League most popular? 

Not sure that's true. I work with a guy who's from Invercargill (south island) but worked in Auckland and i've asked him before about RL in NZ. There's no doubt RL is most popular in Auckland than anywhere else, which he attributes in no small part to the number of league loving Pacific islanders that live there. Whether that makes it more popular in the city than RU i'm not sure, but he tells me whilst RL is played in the south island it's dwarfed in comparison to RU and even cricket. 

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Futtocks

Futtocks

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1 hour ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

A friend is convinced league is the bigger code in Auckland? 

Any truth in it? 

Where in NZ is League most popular? 

I'd guess it is bigger in the New Zealand city Auckland than the Norwegian village Aukland. Check your thread title. :kolobok_wink:

Aukland- a league town?

"We are easily breakable, by illness or falling, or a million other ways of leaving this earthly life. We are just so much mashed potato."  Don Estelle

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Themusician_2

Themusician_2

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There’s more union players in Auckland than league players. The only city in New Zealand where league is bigger than union is  Greymouth in the west coast. Due to the Blues being so ###### for so long the warriors have more fans than the blues and fans gravitate to other nz super rugby teams.  Basketball has outgrown both codes in Auckland.

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Eddie

Eddie

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3 hours ago, Jeff Stein said:

No. The only place in New Zealand where league may be the dominant code is the west coast of the South Island, but that has a fairly small population and is pretty remote.

 

Interesting. Any idea why League became dominant in that small area?

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Newguy

Newguy

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1 hour ago, Eddie said:

Interesting. Any idea why League became dominant in that small area?

It was a strong mining area with a strong working class background that provided good jobs up until the 80s. The WC is basically a strip of land with a massive mountain range behind full of coal, gold and forestry, it is not one of NZ's strong farming areas, farmers tend to play union. It is also one of the most rainy places you will ever visit, it absolutely pisses down near constantly, often it is a very strong rain. Quite a beautiful place in its own way, well worth a visit.

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Newguy

Newguy

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2 hours ago, Themusician_2 said:

There’s more union players in Auckland than league players. The only city in New Zealand where league is bigger than union is  Greymouth in the west coast. Due to the Blues being so ###### for so long the warriors have more fans than the blues and fans gravitate to other nz super rugby teams.  Basketball has outgrown both codes in Auckland.

I don't think it has, playing numbers wise it has, but viewership and bums on seats it has not.

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gnidir

gnidir

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League in Auckland is on the fall mate.

There are more clubs here than Union ones, but they merged a while back to increase their numbers.

The issue is that League was semi pro when Carlaw Park was operating so it drew the wider public interest, now its all park fields and falling standards.

The changing demographic means the working class people are being pushed south our of Auckland proper, with many moving to OZ, whilst more centrally, there hasn't been much work to draw the new immigrants to our game.

The playing numbers in youth levels are the biggest concern out here, and the influence of the High School Union comp is huge. Its basically on a par coverage wise with Superleague in the UK. Its live on Sky, they get good crowds and people love their schools. As a Pohm over here, I find that infinitely weird.

I would hazard to say that since 2000 the game has regressed to probably behind football, Union, touch, cricket, with basketball, baseball and even American football on the rise. 

We haven't had any real investment in the game at club level, its all spent elsewhere, so the club facilities struggle twofold, they get less council funding because of falling numbers and less funding form the league because they are busy elsewhere. At the top level, the Fox memorial senior mens comp draws a decent level of coverage, but is nothing like nationally recognised anymore, and its has basically no corporate support, compared to the half million a year it was getting back in the 90s from breweries and the like.

All in all mate, we need to change up what we are doing here in Auckland, but I can tell you first hand that its a difficult process to reason this with the old guard.

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Sports Prophet

Sports Prophet

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@Bedfordshire Bronco I have less certainty in 2019 than I did in say 2015 when the Warriors were for a long time, the biggest supported domestic club team of any sport in NZ.

Its vaguely like asking is AFL the biggest sport in Sydney. Well, the Sydney Swans are far and away the biggest club team in NSW sport. Doesn’t necessarily make Sydney an AFL town (although it always has had a strong underbelly of support, even in the Swans darkest days).
 

Sydney does however have 9 RL teams though, compared to Auckland only having one Super Rugby franchise. Which does further lend weight that when there is only one club of each code in the city, and the club that operates with greater support than the other is the league team. It does lend weight that Auckland is a league city.

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bazzzz65

bazzzz65

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2 hours ago, Bedfordshire Bronco said:

Ha ha... I love cricket.... Passionately detest basketball

I love 'proper' cricket but not T20 or the abomination that is 'The Hundred'!!

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aj1908

aj1908

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what are the auckland blues crowds like these days ?

the warriors have been around 14k for a while now.

i doubt its a league town but when the warriors were doing well in 2002 their games on TV were getting the same amount of viewers as All blacks test matches

the nrl really has to look at a second new zealand team

if the nrl salary cap keeps rising it will help the warriors as they will be able to offer all blacks higher wages than super rugby can compete with

the current cap is around 10 million, and could easily be 13 million if nrl clubs hadnt been so greedy and asked for 13 million grants

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Sports Prophet

Sports Prophet

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5 hours ago, aj1908 said:

what are the auckland blues crowds like these days ?

the warriors have been around 14k for a while now.

i doubt its a league town but when the warriors were doing well in 2002 their games on TV were getting the same amount of viewers as All blacks test matches

the nrl really has to look at a second new zealand team

if the nrl salary cap keeps rising it will help the warriors as they will be able to offer all blacks higher wages than super rugby can compete with

the current cap is around 10 million, and could easily be 13 million if nrl clubs hadnt been so greedy and asked for 13 million grants

Blues were getting around 10k this year compared to Warriors average of 16k+

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