ruckingkiwi says...

GoWalesGo, have to draw the line somewhere, life isnt the same down Chch way anymore. Why the Bulls, who knows!

Posted 01:21 26th July 2012

ruckingkiwi says...

My opinion having lived in England for a large part of my 20s.. Granted, they do get good crowds but to be fair there are many factors why they get such high attendance for games, obviously population is a lot higher, most of games are in the afternoon, people don't seem to be actively into other activities as they are in NZ, not everyone has a car or license to drive places in England so going to the beach, mountain (ok bad example) isn't as accessible... whereas public transport allows easy access to all sporting venues, having a beer and going to the game is as good as it gets in a lot of places there. And the Chch situation is hardly unexpected, there is a large part of the population who are homeless and have other concerns than that of a rugby game.

Posted 01:44 24th July 2012

kybone says...

IAMpunter2609- Thats a good point. Why do they always play at night in NZ?

davodiablo- So judging by your logic, if England get 83,000 at Twickenham, NZ should only by expected to get around 7,000 when they're at home? Ridiculus suggestion. Surely when you're talking about crowds at club level its the population of the respective city not the nation, that is important.

Posted 05:01 23rd July 2012

GoWalesGo says...

davodiablo

Bullshite

Posted 09:49 22nd July 2012

kybone says...

tha_mai -All nations have other sports to follow. In England Football is by far and a way the most popular sport, and Cricket and League are also very popular. Yet we still manage big crowds for big games- Sarries v Quins drew around 168,000 over 2 regular season games last season. I don;t buy the small population thing- NZ only has 5 teams and as far as i can see they get less than 80,000 between them! The small stadiums thing is not even a valid point bearing in mind that the avaerage stadium size is way bigger than the average crowd size, and actually a 20,000 crowd would have improved the NZ average.

Waz4before- Yea i realsie that there are a lot more league sides in Oz, i was just suprised that, for instance, the Reds get bigger crowds than the apparently more famous Brisbane Broncos.

Posted 21:27 21st July 2012

davodiablo says...

Proportions ...20,000 crowd in NZ is 240,909 in England

Posted 18:03 21st July 2012

ABlack says...

The crusaders fans expect the team to get thru to the final I expect.The problem is itis highly unlikely the final would be played in Christchurch....so this in effect is the last game the ChCh crowd will get to see in the S15.

Posted 10:41 21st July 2012

kybone says...

-3.2 sounds ;ile a fairly chilli night to go and watch a game of rugby, but not uncommon in manay places around the world including the north of England where im from. To be fair, 16C is a pretty tolerable temperature during the day. Its the middle of summer here in England and we've been getting temperatures not much higher than that. And it's pissed it down pretty much every friggin day!

Posted 06:14 21st July 2012

porridge_time says...

kybone...

The media perception is that New Zealanders are mad on rugby to a man... but the reality is that is simply not the case.

Posted 03:38 21st July 2012

tha_mai says...

a few hours pre-kick off and it is 1C in Chch, forecast to drop to minus 1.5C overnight. Easy to see why bars or homes with Sky tv appeal. Still, as it's not raining a few thousand more may buy tickets at the gate as it's the uncovered seating unsold.

Quotes of the day: Crusaders supporter Les Alsop 'To be honest, I'm sick of rugby. They think everyone in New Zealand is rugby-mad,'' and season ticketholder Matt Bendall ''People assume everyone in Christchurch has nothing else on.''

Posted 01:55 21st July 2012