International Registered Player numbers

Here is a little pie chart type diagram showing the size of the player bases in the different major rugby nations around the world.

It is quite fascinating.

http://4.bp.blogspot.com/-yeSN53py7PI/TmXJ4UMiD1I/AAAAAAAAAgs/54kHw_zo9AY/s1600/IRB+Player+Numbers.jpg

If the link is not working for you, check it out on Rugby Dump.

Thanks mate. Wow, i never expected those numbers for England

I did not realise Japan had so many.

Ah great. Oh well, I suppose it makes a change from 'foreign legion' posts.

Interestingly England have smallest % of senior males

Also please note Georgia only have 850 senior male registered players. National game my arse

HammerofThunor wrote:Interestingly England have smallest % of senior males

Why have England so many more registered players than senior male players? The average outside of England looks to be about 30% of the players registered.

In England only 6.5% of the 2,549,196 players are Senior Males.

I'd say senior male players is the important one. Who knows what the rest represents? Could be anyone playing tag rugby at the weekend. Maybe it's in the interests of some countries to count as many "registered players" as possible for funding reasons?

If you look at Wales senior male players it's 44% of the total. Whereas England is 6% of the total. It seems unlikely those figures are being counted in the same way. England are counting more in their "total players", for whatever reason.

I wonder how accurate these figures are.

I phned the Boland Rugby union a few months ago and enquired how mnay registered clubs they had and accrding to them it was in excess of 130 clubs, now most likely many of these are social community clubs who play for enjoyment an not really part of any feeder system into the mainstream.

It's not neccesarily accurate though, because these only count players registered by a club. Imagine all the kids who play rugby in school that aren;t counted here.

Also a lot of players in nations like Romania simply aren;t registered.

I did write a list of senior male players a while back taken off the IRB website.

Wales 22408
Austrai 1284
Belgium 3905
Brazil 5541
Russia 3633
Ukraine 800
Zimbabwe 768
Uruguay 1219
Sri Lanka 3850
Spain 9588
Samoa 7690
Romania 1048
Portugal 1040
Morocco 3489
Poland 3143
Paupa New guinea 2290
Pakistan 1859
Nigeria 510
Senegal 720
Holland 4386
Mexico 968
Madagasgar 16,750
Korea 1300
Kenya 6,772
india 2982
Hong Kong 1813
Germany 4639
Russia 3633
Czech 1697
Croatia 733
Denmark 1766
Finland 265
Georgia 878
Cook Islands 526
Columbia 2784
China 3900
Chinease Tapei 1000
Chile 4830
Cameroon 1049
Mexico 968
Kazakhstan 344
Jamaica 276
Thailand 5716

biltongbek wrote:I wonder how accurate these figures are.

The player numbers tally directly with the Unions info on the IRB website, that is the source of the data.
Though I will add school rugby players arent included only club registered ones.

It would be interesting to know what percentage of those senior male players are eligible to play for the country in which they are registered.

According to 2010 data the UK has 236,000 Saffers, 112,000 Aussies & 72,000 Kiwis. Based on my experience of London clubs, there's at least a few of those registered over here. Then you've got migrant workers from within the UK&I; again, I've played with a fair number of Irish, Welsh & Scots in London, and I imagine the other big cities in UK&I have a similar situation.

There might well be a fair number of dual registered players as well. For instance, a decent number of students in the UK don't attend a university in their country and if they play at home as well as uni they would feature under two unions.