The Greenhouse

ACT Brumbies boss Doug Edwards will quit his job just four months into a two-year contract as the Super Rugby club fights to find a major sponsor and battles financial losses.

It's another off-field blow to the Brumbies as they scramble to find a major sponsor in time for the start of the Super Rugby season and will announce a record financial loss of more than $700,000 at their annual general meeting next week.

They are still looking for a major financial backer to replace the University of Canberra as their naming-rights partner and they are expected to report a loss of more than $700,000 in their annual report.

The ARU has also cut its funding to Super Rugby teams, leaving a financial hole of more than $500,000 in the Brumbies' budget which is set to affect community rugby and junior rugby fees.

Read more: http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union ... 22i7u.html

No major sponsor, spiralling debt, no CEO and a broke ARU not backing them up. Personally the quicker Rugby Yawnion collapses the better, it is without a doubt one of the most boring codes of football to watch, apart from gAyFuL which is in it's own league as far as boring goes. If you put skirts on all the afl players and took away the 6 point posts, it'd closer to netball than a football code.

By by brumbies.

Big opportunity for the nrl to jump in and support the Raiders. Do to the Brumbies what the ARU did to the raiders during the super league war.

Otherwise AFL will be licking their lips and taking more ground in the canberra region.

I'd rather see the giants die off first

I agree, kill the Giants off and leave the whole region to us to exploit. We would become a real powerhouse club if we had the entire SE region to ourselves.

I've got quite a few friends who follow rugby union and the Brumbies. Over the past 10 or so years many of them have given it to me about how ordinary the Raiders have been. I've always been polite and have asked them how their team is going, and have ended up in quite a few conversations about some random NRL reserve grade quality player who is about to make their Wallabies debut. Most of the time I just share my opinion that I used to watch a bit of Union despite having never played the sport, but nowadays the game is dominated by penalties, kicking the ball to the opposition and "set pieces" which bore me to tears.

These days I just ask how their club is going finding a chairman, sponsor or indeed enough fans to turn up to the game despite them apparently being one of the best teams in the comp.

The sport has seriously killed itself. It is invariably one of the most boring things to watch these days. There is no wonder the bandwagoners are turning away in droves and FTA TV don't want a bar of it.

I agree with most of that - I'd only very rarely watch a Super Rugby game these days

Raiders > Comets > Brumbies > Giants

Ive said before, my boss, one other colleague and my father in law are all Union tragics. Love the sport, two of those three played the code to a reasonably high level. And every single one of them find the game a total **** bore these days. Unwatchable. It's now well and truely running 4th in the majors. And if trends continue, it wont be a major much longer

Maybe we could buy them? They might be profitable if facilities and admin were shared. Plus we could offload Mccrone to them.

I can't imagine they cost much.

I always thought yawnion sucked. Now Im glad people are catching on

edwahu wrote:Maybe we could buy them? They might be profitable if facilities and admin were shared. Plus we could offload Mccrone to them.

I can't imagine they cost much.

Why would you buy a failed business, with little prospect of making it profitable? No way it would happen, in any case.

greeneyed wrote:

edwahu wrote:Maybe we could buy them? They might be profitable if facilities and admin were shared. Plus we could offload Mccrone to them.

I can't imagine they cost much.

Why would you buy a failed business, with little prospect of making it profitable? No way it would happen, in any case.

Actually with shared office and support staff as well as facilities, it could potentially be profitable for both organisations.

Not if you have a product people don't want.

That product is more wanted in the ACT than the Raiders.

I hate to see any sport suffering in my home town but why should any of us show sympathy to the code that was only 10 years ago intent on destroying Rugby league with their supposed 'war chest'. If Brumbies are struggling financially you would have to think the Force and Rebels would also be doing it tough. Although, apparently the game is flourishing in the Northern Hemisphere.

No sympathy for Yawnion from me, the long slow death of that code is pleasing to watch. It wasn't that long ago it was trumpeting the Sewer 14 as the jewel code in the crown. Rugby Yawnion, the code they play in empty stadiums.

Yeah I'm just glad to see them struggle after their smugness.

Now if only afl would suffer a similar fate

dubby wrote:Yeah I'm just glad to see them struggle after their smugness.e

Yep, **** 'em

I think youll find these stories relate to a group looking to take over the Board.

Talk of the demise of rugby may be a bit premature. The 3rd biggest sporting event in the world will be the world cup next year which looks a really open contest, a new tv deal is around the corner, super rugby is about to open new markets in Japan and Argentina, average super rugby crowds are bigger that the NRL's and Dan Carter just signed for French rugby at a staggering $2.5 million dollars a season.

We just need a bit of success for the Wallabies and things will be back to normal.

Shadow Boxer wrote:I think youll find these stories relate to a group looking to take over the Board.

Talk of the demise of rugby may be a bit premature. The 3rd biggest sporting event in the world will be the world cup next year which looks a really open contest, a new tv deal is around the corner, super rugby is about to open new markets in Japan and Argentina, average super rugby crowds are bigger that the NRL's and Dan Carter just signed for French rugby at a staggering $2.5 million dollars a season.

We just need a bit of success for the Wallabies and things will be back to normal.

Union is in a massive hole atm, and the new tv deal is not going to be a great improvement on the last one. The issue I believe is that we need a trans tasman comp similar to the netball but the road blocks to this is the tv deal won't be as great without South Africa and the Kiwis want their best talent playing RSA opposition.

World rugby ? not at all, Aus rugby however has some decisions to make.

The tv deal will be about the same, they hoped to get the derby's on free to air but the crapness of the Wallabies spooked the fta channels.

I'm not sure trans-tasman is the answer, that's just Bledisloe really. The big risk is that SA is eyeing off the massive pots of gold involved in the six nations and European rugby. If they walk super rugby would need to massively restructure.

Some Wallaby success at the world cup would be really nice.

So Australian rugby has bandwagon supporters?

We all know that.

Doesn't everybody ?

Interestingly enough I would suggest RU fans are the most rusted on of any code, it's a whole sub-culture.

Normally I'd agree with that statement but the last few seasons have proven otherwise. Brumbies crowds are just as bad as Raiders crowds yet the Brumbies have been in contention for the title the past three years. They got 14k to a home final just this year. I think even the most rusted on fans are struggling with the game at the moment. Only in Australia though. Everywhere else in the world people still love the game but it's definitely on the nose in Australia and you cannot deny that.

Gerg wrote:Normally I'd agree with that statement but the last few seasons have proven otherwise. Brumbies crowds are just as bad as Raiders crowds yet the Brumbies have been in contention for the title the past three years. They got 14k to a home final just this year. I think even the most rusted on fans are struggling with the game at the moment. Only in Australia though. Everywhere else in the world people still love the game but it's definitely on the nose in Australia and you cannot deny that.

Maybe you just over estimate how many "rusted on fans" they have. In my line of work Union fans are very common and I must say, they are absolute tragics.

Gerg wrote:Normally I'd agree with that statement but the last few seasons have proven otherwise. Brumbies crowds are just as bad as Raiders crowds yet the Brumbies have been in contention for the title the past three years. They got 14k to a home final just this year. I think even the most rusted on fans are struggling with the game at the moment. Only in Australia though. Everywhere else in the world people still love the game but it's definitely on the nose in Australia and you cannot deny that.

Well I can,

The Waratahs pulled the biggest club rugby crowd ever of 61,000 people to the final mid this year with the tv ratings in SA, NZ and Aus up 41 % on the corresponding game the year before.

It was pretty well universally acknowledged as a game for the ages.

You are confusing rusted on supporters for band wagon. Where were these 60,000 last year when, like every year prior, Waratahs were massively underachieving?
A 41% increase? That is a fair improvement. So what were the actual numbers for the two years?

There is a big difference between changing codes and turning up to matches. There is massive latent support for the raiders in Canberra, they just don't go to games because we have been crap for so long. If we have some success our crowds will increase.

It's perfectly normal and I don't consider those supporters bandwagoners, just people less involved.

The stats came from this article.

http://www.smh.com.au/rugby-union/union ... 01qlp.html

Thanks for the link. I can see why you used a percentage rather than real numbers because the numbers are pretty ordinary. And on the article **** Spiro - lol - why can't rugby union tragics just report on their code? The amount of rugby league "click bait" used is simply pathetic. Fitzsimmons being the worst offender.

Predictions of the end of the Brumbies might be bit premature, looks like they will be living large.

One more sleep and footy is back for 2015

http://www.canberratimes.com.au/rugby-u ... 3bzfy.html

Biggest win ever over QLD, doesn't get any better than that.

I'd forgotten what a sublime footballer David Pocock is

Vintage Canberra Stadium, get 9k and call it 13k

Hopefully we get a similar sized crowd to our trial game in Queanbeyan next weekend.