Quote:
Originally Posted by Alpina107
Hey GB, don't necessarily want to get into a footie debate on a motorsport site, but wondered about your comparison between football and rugby player numbers. Are there numbers to support soccer being ahead, or is that anecdotal only?
|
There are definitely numbers to support it, and particularly in Auckland but here's an example - the AIMS Games in Tauranga just recently finished, biggest school sports tournament in Australasia (over 8000 kids from all over the North Island) and there were 57 football teams, 44 rugby and 10 league.
There's a boy in my son's football team (he plays for TKU who are the biggest sports club of any kind in the country) who has played rugby all his life but has switched to football this year (aged 12/13) because he was sick of being smashed by kids that outweighed him by 20kg and shaved.
Rugby now mainly a PI sport in Auckland. Nobody wears Blues jerseys (can you blame them) and nobody turns up to Eden Park or North Harbour stadium for the ITM Cup, but the FIFA U20 tournament was very well attended here. Everywhere you go, you see kids with Man U, Tottenham, Phoenix, Chelsea, FC Barca, Real Madrid shirts on. Auckland's population is now so foreign that a large number of people have never had any connection with rugby.
I could probably do some research on the numbers playing each sport but I think we are WAY off topic here
