For fans they are in competition with each other. Every fan that goes to a VFL game on Saturday afternoon is one that cannot go to the AFL game at the same time.
That means that the only people that go to VFL games are those that don't want to go to an AFL game.
Rugby's support is not diluted at all by the NRC. Every fan that goes to a Super rugby game can go see an NRC game with no conflict.
There is an average of 46 players on an AFL team list. That means there is approximately 460 contracted players in Victoria. 230 of those players will be in the AFL teams (22+ 1 Emergency). In addition 7.5 per team are injured so that leaves 155 AFL contracted players which will play in the VFL every weekend. there's 15 teams so that is about 10 AFL listed players who will play VFL every weekend.
There's 175 Super Rugby Contracted players. 30 will be in the Wallaby squad leaving 145. Super Rugby teams had an average of 4 injured players so let's take out another 20 leaving 125. That 125 spread across 9 teams is about 14 per team.
In an ideal injury scenario VFL teams field approximately 55% AFL listed players in their starting line up and NRC teams field 93% of theirs. This won't happen always and injuries have been quite high this year but there is certainly that potential. In addition returning experienced players like Steve Mafi and Cam Treolar who aren't just rejected Super Rugby players much like the VFL's AFL rejects, these are coming off contracts in other professional leagues.
My point is that the VFL can only ever sell itself as a reserve grade competition, where there is far less of that stigma about the NRC as there would only be an average of 3 players per team that would return from the Wallaby squad (I've ignored squad members who have played NRC).
Now don't sit there and fucking tell me, that watching teams primarily filled with Super Rugby players is a harder sell to rugby fans when there is no other rugby on and that there is at best 1 Saturday night game on TV, than watching players not good enough to make AFL teams instead of just watching AFL teams play at the same time.
There's no need to get abusive, when I'm trying to have a rational discussion with you.
You see while all the VFL matches are on Saturday afternoons, the vast majority of AFL matches aren't. Just like NRL there are games played Thursday nights, Friday nights, Saturday nights and Sunday afternoons and Sunday twilight. So one AFL game might clash with the whole round of VFL, but the rest of the games don't.
We'll obviously have to agree about the state based Aussie Rules competitions - I think that they have far more gravitas than you give them credit for.
I also think that it's not valid to compare rugby, which is the 4th most popular football code in the country, with Aussie Rules in Melbourne. Every single person in Melbourne identifies with Aussie Rules, it's part of the culture. Rugby has nowhere near the comunity engagement that Aussie Rules enjoys in Melbourne.
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