Cheaper tickets for games. Plain and simple. Juniors under 12 who wear their club rugby jersey get in free.
Take a leaf from the Jesuits "give me a child, & I will give you the man" or words to the same general effect.
We get popularity by appealing to the real young kids, thru their mothers. If we can hookem at a young age, we got'em for life.
Promote Barefoot Rugby until Under 10's. "Weight for age" is a real issue for the mums. You need to have provision to run light weight and heavy weight junior rugby.
Promote Beach Rugby competitions in the summer. Leverage of the Surf Clubs tribalism. If they can attract a TV audience for a beach cricket, why not beach rugby. While daylight savings is on, social twilight beach rugby competitions.
Seven aside Rugby is now an olympic sport. Sevens tournaments are easy to organise teams for and good money spinners for clubs. They are great for preseason 15's fitness. Bring Schools into rugby sevens fold with competitions. Arrange barefoot sevens competitions for schools in poorer areas where parents may not want to buy boots for little johnny.
More coaching education programmes to be directed to Schools, mainly targetted at public schools. Athough at grades lower than the A's in the so called elite Rugby schools, the coaches seem to be quite ordinary, and in the non-rugby stronghold private schools, coaches other than the 1st XV are particularly ordinary.
Wallabies and S15 franchise players to be allocated to schools and hospitals. School visits to be coordinated with coaching skills days. These seem effective in late Jan during Daylight savings periods when there is very little else on.
Absolute effort in the first week back at school for the new starters. New kids (and new mums) at primary school in week 1 read EVERY last newsletter handed out with religious fervour. If you can not get your advertising material in the first week in primary school, you might as well not bother. To a lesser degree, the same applies in the first week in High School (Yr 7 in NSW). Get 'em while they are young.
You gotta make it easy for "The Australian Families" (Thanks Julia) to get involved in rugby. Doesn't matter if they are shit tickets on the corner or up high at the ends or sides, Mr/Mrs Average and their two kids should not need a mortgage to attend a decent game of rugby. Consider the whole package esp concessionaire prices for food, refreshments and merchandise. Fill the stadiums up.
Influence the media. Get better quality journalists writing articles in the heartland. Give decent writers proper access to the evolving stories and players. Dry up the flow of information to the miserable bastard journalists.
Take a leaf from the WWF and develop some real bad arse dudes that we can all love to hate. If there are none on the current playing roster, then direct one to become one. I am the boss of the ARU and I am your paymaster. You will do what you are told!!!
This part of the rant is over.
