Rugby league in Australia

Rugby league is a popular team sport played in Australia. It competes with Australian Rules Football for the title of "most popular football code", and is dominant in the states of New South Wales and Queensland. Australia has a rich history of rugby league, first taking up the sport in 1908. The country has reigned dominant over the other rugby league-playing nations for many years, but enjoys a strong rivalry with New Zealand.

"League", as it is commonly known (or informally as football or footy in Queensland and New South Wales), is often seen as a "working man's sport". The Australian Rugby League, the sport's governing body in Australia, is working on ways to expand rugby league's popularity across political and social borders.

History

Main Article: History of rugby league

A similar schism to that which occurred in Great Britain, and for similar reasons, opened up in the union establishment of Australia, where the term "rugby league" was first used for the new game. In 1907, at the instigation of the famous test cricket player Victor Trumper, at a meeting in Bateman's Crystal Hotel in Sydney, New South Wales, the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) was formed. Players were immediately recruited for the new game, and despite the threat of immediate and lifetime expulsion from the rugby union, the NSWRL managed to recruit Herbert "Dally" Messenger, the most famous rugby player in Sydney at that time.

Governing body

Main Article: Australian Rugby League
Main Article: National Rugby League

The Australian Rugby League is the governing body for the sport of rugby league in Australia, and is in charge of the national team and the annual State of Origin competition, while the National Rugby League is in charge of premier rugby league competition for Australasia.

Competitions

The premier rugby league competition in Australia is the National Rugby League (NRL). The NRL competition is the result of a merger between the Australian Rugby League and Super League competitions in 1998.

National Rugby League

The NRL Telstra Premiership is made up of 15 teams from Queensland (2), New South Wales (10), Victoria (1), the Australian Capital Territory (1) and New Zealand (1). The Gold Coast is re-entering the competition in 2007.

NRL Attendances

Rugby league attendances saw their best year in 1995, with total attendances reaching 3,061,893. This was a large increase on the previous years and was no doubt due to the formation of several new clubs and the renaming of the competition, from the New South Wales Rugby League (NSWRL) to the Australian Rugby league (ARL).

The year of 1996 saw what may be the largest decrease in attendance ever (2,450,776, down 611,117 down from 1995) in the ARL. This crowd decrease is attributed to the poor publicity surrounding the ongoing court cases related to Super League. When the SL was introduced in 1997 it attracted 1,111,189. The ARL for the same year saw slightly higher attendances of 1,308,824. Subsequent years of 1998, in which the merger of the SL and ARL formed the National Rugby League (NRL) and 1999 also saw increases.

The year 2000 saw club mergers and "relegations" from the NRL. As a result of the effective slashing of clubs from the NRL was also mimiced in the slashing of crowd figures as fans became disgraced as the club they had supported for many years was torn apart.

Crowd figures did not improve until 2003, with an increase of 249,317 on the previous year, 2002. Figures increased again in 2004 and 2005. The aggregate crowd for 2005 was 2,964,288 and the average crowd figure was 16,468, the highest ever recorded.^*(Statistics do not incude finals)

Queensland Wizard Cup

Queensland Wizard Cup is a statewide competition that is made up of 11 teams, most of which are from South East Queensland. It is run by the Queensland Rugby League. It began in 1996 and became the Number 1 Rugby League competition in 1998. It is generally regarded as the second best Rugby League competition in Australia.

New South Wales Premier League

The VB Premier League is often regarded as the Second Divsion of the NRL, mainly because a large number of the NSW-based NRL teams have Reserve Grade sides playing in the competition.

Demographics of the game

The following subsections refer to data released by the Australian Sports Commission in the "Exercise, Recreation and Sport Surveys" of 2001 to 2004. These statistics relate to Australians aged 15 years and over.

Statistics relating to children have been sourced from the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the "Children's Participation in Cultural and Leisure Activities" publication of 2003. These statistics relate to Australian children aged 5 to 14 years.

Total Participation

In 2004, a total of 172,000 Australians aged 15 years and over participated in rugby league. This was the same as the number who participated in 2003, but an increase for 2002 (151,000) and 2001 (165,000).

The number of children participating in Rugby League in 2003 was 76,200, or 5.6% of all children. This represents a decrease 16,200 child participants from 2000 when this survey was last completed.

Sex

The vast majority of Rugby League participants are male. Of the 172,000 participants in 2004, 95% (164,000) were male.

The Australian Women's Rugby League was formed in 1993, which only achieved affiliation with the Australian Rugby League in 1998. This is in contrast to the men's competition which has existed since 1908.

Other sports fair much better, whose participation among women are much higher. The lack of women, in Australian rugby league is almost entirely due to the physical, body on body contact and the nature and frequency of injuries in the game. However rugby league in Australia has in recent years endured a poor rapport with women following professional players ability to get them selves into the head lines for all the wrong reasons. The most famous of headlines is with out a doubt those related to the bulldogs sex scandal.

The direct consequences of the allegations are not known and have never been measured but it is generally considered after several repeat allegations against many clubs over 3 years, that women have shunned the sport. Perhaps the greatest measure is the length that rugby league organisations will go to, to counteract the bad image their organisations have subsequently endured.

In 2005 the Canterbury Bulldogs put forward several initiatives aimed directly at women. These included an invite only lunch for 300 of Sydney's corporate women to raise funds for the Bulldogs chosen charity, The Breast Cancer Foundation and skills development for school girls with in the Bulldogs district. This follows the recruitment of female members to the boards of the National Rugby League and several of its clubs for the first time in history. Whilst the exact impact on the sport may never be known, its obvious that rugby league bodies have recognised the poor image rugby league has with women in Australia and thus national bodies and clubs alike have acted to curb any further damage.

Not all the perceptions of Rugby League being a mostly man game are completely true. At a junior and local level there are many women involved in volunteering positions. Women form a very important part of the local club structures. However it is not customary for women over the age of 11 to continue playing Rugby League against the boys and the exclusively women's Rugby League clubs have a relatively small profile in comparison to the local boy's clubs.

Age

The vast majority (77%) of Rugby League players are aged between 18 and 24 years. The remaining participants are mainly aged between 25 and 34 years and 35 and 44 years.

What these figures do not include is the participation with people below the ages of 18. Statistics have shown previously that half of all injuries that occur in rugby league, occur to the ages of children under 15 years of age. Recent research by the University of New South Wales has shown that 23% of parents are likely to discourage their son from playing rugby league. In contrast, the next most discouraged sport was rugby union, with only 7.5% of parents willing to discourage the sport. This is despite recent research by Medibank annually since 2003 that puts other sports in Australia, such as Australian Rules Football and Soccer as producing more major injuries.

The injury rates and the public perception of rugby league as a dangerous sport are most likely the catalysts for the introduction of several initiatives by the national rugby league and ARL development in recent years to curb the number of youth playing other sports. The specific initiatives over the years includes a Safe play code, Kids to kangaroos programs and new forms of modified rugby league, such as, Mod league and Mini Footy to help young children prepare for the full rigours of the international code. Also with such introductions are the competitions aimed at school children such as Joey league, League of legends and League Sevens, which use modified rugby league rules such as Tag and Sevens.

Location

New South Wales and Queensland account for almost 85% (145,300) of the 172,000 people playing rugby league nationally; 85,800 of which are from NSW and 59,500 from QLD. However, per capita figures show that Queensland and the Northern Territory rate ahead of New South Wales participation figures, making Queensland and the Northern Territory the largest participators per capita of rugby league in Australia.

Rugby league enjoys only minor participation in other states of Australia due to competition with Australia's other premier football league, the Australian Football League. Victoria and Western Australia have roughly an equal number of participants with Western Australia higher per capita. South Australia has the lowest participation levels for mainland Australia and Tasmania by far has the least participants for rugby league in the entire nation.

The reasons for such division between the states of Australia is certainly due to the promotion of Australian Rules Football, in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. In those times, Australia Rules Football was expanding through out southern and western Australia. Today, participation in Australian Rules Football in New South Wales and Queensland is still relatively low compared to the other states and territories of Australia. However, participation in Australian Rules Football has been slowly increasing over the past four years - particularly in Queensland.

State based participation within Australian sports normally show a larger amount of participation in the regional or rural areas of that state, commonly called "Rest of State" as opposed to the capital of that state. Participation in rugby league bucks this trend with most of its participation coming from capital cities of Australia, the largest being Sydney and Brisbane.

The national team

Main Article: Australia national rugby league team

The Australian national rugby league team represents Australia at rugby league. Since July 7, 1994 the team's nickname has been the Kangaroos. (Prior to that the Australian team was only referred to as the Kangaroos when on tours of Great Britain or France. They are administered by the Australian Rugby League.

External links

References