kinsman says...

Excuse the inevitable characters that appear from a copy/paste...

What concerns me most about these figures are not the players or the attrition rates when you move through the ages to senior players, it is the frighteningly low number of referees in both nations..... if people are concerned about standards today, for Australia and New Zealand at least (haven't looked at other nations) these numbers would not suggest it is about to get better.....

Australia:

Number Of Clubs:767

Registered+Unregistered Players:297389

Number of Referees:273

Pre-teen Male Players:151036

Pre-teen Female Player:0

Teen Male Player:87162

Teen Female Player:0

Senior Male Player:57766

Senior Female Player:1425

Total Male Player:295964

Total Female Player:1425

New Zealand:

Number Of Clubs:600

Registered+Unregistered Players:146893

Number of Referees:187

Pre-teen Male Players:64794

Pre-teen Female Player:9540

Teen Male Player:40390

Teen Female Player:3521

Senior Male Player:27726

Senior Female Player:922

Total Male Player:132910

Total Female Player:13983

Posted 11:39 24th April 2012

isthatrightref says...

@ knisman... not so much surprising as gob-smacking, even allowing for Trinats being right about aussies numbers being pumped up by hangers-on. I knew grass-roots NZ rugby was in a bad way but less than 30K senior players isn't good news esp as I keep hearing that league is getting even stronger in south Auckland & gaining ground in what were once strong rugby communities.

Still have to wonder though why with a 57K player base aussie can't sustain a credible sub-S15 comp and/ or field more than 2 or at occasionally 3 competitive S12/14/15 teams in the same season. Obviously not enough mining billionaires played the game as kids...

Posted 11:09 24th April 2012

kinsman says...

@isthatrightref, maybe a surprising stat for some but both your and Kiwilads figures are significantly wide of the mark. Latest IRB figures show Australia with c.300000 players and NZ with c.150000. When it comes to male senior players, Australia has 57766 players with New Zealand less than 50% of this at 27726. Everything is detailed on the IRB website....

....of course we all know that the IRB is actually a New Zealand body that has been cunningly disguised with 26 other members, a French chairman and South African vice chairman so should probably not be taken at face value...

Posted 10:34 24th April 2012

jonesy2 says...

and people have the idiocy to say injuries arent an excuse. of course they are! if not an excuse it is a reason

Posted 04:08 24th April 2012

kiwilad says...

Trader, according to recent stats Australia have 12000 more senior registered Rugby players than us in NZ, so unsure how they can be short of depth.

Now that we have identified this, I wonder what wonderful reasons for failure Trinats can conjure up now???

Posted 03:31 24th April 2012