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<blockquote data-quote="powerfulduck" data-source="post: 575249" data-attributes="member: 58567"><p>Great topic, it's something I often ponder hailing from Birmingham where our teams have fairly awful support.</p><p> </p><p>On the AP competing with the top 14:</p><p>I always ask myself would a team in Britains second largest city work? frankly no not unless there was a significant culture change. I cant speak for other cities but rugby just isnt that accesable to young children here. I'm 28 and my first experience of Rugby was seeing us win the world cup on the news. I had to actively make the effort to find out about rugby, i watched the 6N from then on, the first world cup that I actually watched was '07. The local paper has very little about Moseley or Birmingham & solihull but neither do the general populace seem to care. It's always football other sports are shunted 6-7 pages back for example. warks are current county champions but I'd put good money on 9/10 people here not knowing that. I'd guess that it's hugely different in the traditional rugby towns like Gloucester etc but until you get these huge metropolitan areas watching and interested in rugby things are going to stay the same with regards to better sponsers & tv deals. </p><p></p><p>But it's also IMO a sign of the growing change in how we view our sports, for example Aston Villa (sorry to bang on about Birmingham things, but it's all I have experience of) are the biggest sports team in the West Midlands. They have supposedly over 1million fans (facebook likes), dubious stat I know but the population of the area is 2.3million so not to far fetched. yet they get 35k-40k attendance in what is a 42k capacity stadium. When I speak to people in bars,gyms etc they all say the same things its to expensive to pay £30-40 a ticket or it's all on down the local watering hole via Greek tv. Also the kids who are about 10-15 years younger than me are growing up in the PL golden area where they don't feel empathy to local teams as it's become so expensive to actually visit games that there exposure to sport is via their living rooms. People just arent going to live sports anymore and support for teams that arent neccesarily succesful wanes. I like no doubt all of you first experienced my games live and the support carried on from then. 10 years ago sportsdays at schools were kids in villa,Blues & west brom kits and the one Man U Kid that vainly tried to explain coming from the stetford. Nows it's the other way round where it's the kid that's in the local kits that look odd. Sports are being viewed from the sofa more & more and will continue as the average man is priced out of the market. And It's because of my contempt for these glory hunting tv fan types that i've dragged myself down to billesley common & villa park (i am a villa fan but have only ever been a 1-2 times a year visitor due to not having the time) on the odd occasion to watch a Moseley game purely to support a local team. I can't help but think that Moseley & Birmingham both have missed a trick here though. Years ago at school we were visited by the Birmingham bullets basketball team and they took a PE lesson for us and we were given a free ticket voucher, I couldn't go eventually due to family reasons but most of the kids went and 1-2 continued to go there after. I can't understand why neither Birmingham based rugby outfit hasn't done something similar to drum up support. Especially with the average man not being able to take his kids to the football as much anymore. I don't have children myself yet but I'd love to take my kids to 1-2 live games when their older, if its £30-40 for a family day out at the rugby compared to £150 at the villa it doesn't take a genius to see where I'll be taking them. </p><p></p><p>Somethings I would seriously look at is moving the season to fill the hole that football leaves every summer, there are plenty of casual fans that will watch premier league games on Sky that don't involve their teams rather than watch a AP game. Of course it will overlap but if the business end of a season came after the football had finished it could build more of a following IMO. I'd also condense the cup competitions. And maybe field B teams in the lower leagues like Spanish football teams do. </p><p></p><p>Eventually I see a situation where the rugby grows on a global scale but I still think we're 30-40 years from it truly being a global sport. I see in England anyway lots of smaller teams merging and a general condensing of the pyramid where it's quality not quantity. For example I'm at a loss as to why the 2 Birmingham outfits aren't merging anyway to pool resources in the hope of one day getting an AP team. The only other way I see anybody breaking into the AP with the current system is in a Worcester style (I live in the south west suburbs of the city not far from the Worcester border and I occasionally see the odd warriors jersey or car sticker in the worcestershire towns but that's literally the last 1-2 years and its rare, but they are growing) with a financial backer.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="powerfulduck, post: 575249, member: 58567"] Great topic, it's something I often ponder hailing from Birmingham where our teams have fairly awful support. On the AP competing with the top 14: I always ask myself would a team in Britains second largest city work? frankly no not unless there was a significant culture change. I cant speak for other cities but rugby just isnt that accesable to young children here. I'm 28 and my first experience of Rugby was seeing us win the world cup on the news. I had to actively make the effort to find out about rugby, i watched the 6N from then on, the first world cup that I actually watched was '07. The local paper has very little about Moseley or Birmingham & solihull but neither do the general populace seem to care. It's always football other sports are shunted 6-7 pages back for example. warks are current county champions but I'd put good money on 9/10 people here not knowing that. I'd guess that it's hugely different in the traditional rugby towns like Gloucester etc but until you get these huge metropolitan areas watching and interested in rugby things are going to stay the same with regards to better sponsers & tv deals. But it's also IMO a sign of the growing change in how we view our sports, for example Aston Villa (sorry to bang on about Birmingham things, but it's all I have experience of) are the biggest sports team in the West Midlands. They have supposedly over 1million fans (facebook likes), dubious stat I know but the population of the area is 2.3million so not to far fetched. yet they get 35k-40k attendance in what is a 42k capacity stadium. When I speak to people in bars,gyms etc they all say the same things its to expensive to pay £30-40 a ticket or it's all on down the local watering hole via Greek tv. Also the kids who are about 10-15 years younger than me are growing up in the PL golden area where they don't feel empathy to local teams as it's become so expensive to actually visit games that there exposure to sport is via their living rooms. People just arent going to live sports anymore and support for teams that arent neccesarily succesful wanes. I like no doubt all of you first experienced my games live and the support carried on from then. 10 years ago sportsdays at schools were kids in villa,Blues & west brom kits and the one Man U Kid that vainly tried to explain coming from the stetford. Nows it's the other way round where it's the kid that's in the local kits that look odd. Sports are being viewed from the sofa more & more and will continue as the average man is priced out of the market. And It's because of my contempt for these glory hunting tv fan types that i've dragged myself down to billesley common & villa park (i am a villa fan but have only ever been a 1-2 times a year visitor due to not having the time) on the odd occasion to watch a Moseley game purely to support a local team. I can't help but think that Moseley & Birmingham both have missed a trick here though. Years ago at school we were visited by the Birmingham bullets basketball team and they took a PE lesson for us and we were given a free ticket voucher, I couldn't go eventually due to family reasons but most of the kids went and 1-2 continued to go there after. I can't understand why neither Birmingham based rugby outfit hasn't done something similar to drum up support. Especially with the average man not being able to take his kids to the football as much anymore. I don't have children myself yet but I'd love to take my kids to 1-2 live games when their older, if its £30-40 for a family day out at the rugby compared to £150 at the villa it doesn't take a genius to see where I'll be taking them. Somethings I would seriously look at is moving the season to fill the hole that football leaves every summer, there are plenty of casual fans that will watch premier league games on Sky that don't involve their teams rather than watch a AP game. Of course it will overlap but if the business end of a season came after the football had finished it could build more of a following IMO. I'd also condense the cup competitions. And maybe field B teams in the lower leagues like Spanish football teams do. Eventually I see a situation where the rugby grows on a global scale but I still think we're 30-40 years from it truly being a global sport. I see in England anyway lots of smaller teams merging and a general condensing of the pyramid where it's quality not quantity. For example I'm at a loss as to why the 2 Birmingham outfits aren't merging anyway to pool resources in the hope of one day getting an AP team. The only other way I see anybody breaking into the AP with the current system is in a Worcester style (I live in the south west suburbs of the city not far from the Worcester border and I occasionally see the odd warriors jersey or car sticker in the worcestershire towns but that's literally the last 1-2 years and its rare, but they are growing) with a financial backer. [/QUOTE]
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