Australian rugby union set for a worrying decline?

Let's start from from an Oz government report on sport generally http://www.ausport.gov.au/information/nsr/the_future_of_australian_sport
What is a trend?

A trend is a pattern of activity that will change Australian sport over coming decades. Examples of sports-relevant trends might include:

Australia's ageing population
new migrant populations settling in Australia
growth or decline of sports sponsorship
increasing importance of physical and mental health
greater uptake of non-organised sport (e.g. running alone with an iPod versus playing a weekly team game).

Cricket (formally (maybe still officially) the Oz national sport) is in disarray whilst being drowned in a maelstrom of decline.

Tennis is all but gone

Swimming - we'll see next month in the Olympics

Athletics - ditto

Rugby Union - I don't know how influential or representative http://www.theroar.com.au is but the trend of opinion is that League rugby and Rules are backwasing the tide of public interest in RU.

Is Australian Rugby Union in a true crisis?

In that I mean not the recent past or the immediate future, but the mid-long term.

Very difficult to say in the mid or long term. A while back you could've said the same for the UK in many of those sports. Then suddenly they're back up the top in track cycling, triathlon, cricket ad nauseum and you wonder what all the fuss was about. But that's not to say it'll stay that way nor the case with Australia.

Sports follow cycles. Australia were at the very top in many sports like cricket, swimming, league, rugby ad nauseum for some time. When you dominate for so long, it becomes more noticeable when you're off the pace. But to suggest that all of Australia is too old, running alone with ipods and that they're finished in sports they once dominated is too hasty.

Australia do indeed have problems promoting rugby competing against league and Aussie Rules. They have fallen off the pace in quite a few sports they excelled at. But much like in times of economic crises and booms, we either think there is no end to the boom or no end to the depths we can plunge. But the truth is always in the middle.

I say rugby in Australia has a few important problems to deal with but they sit at number two in the rankings and are not alone in facing problems. Which nation isn't facing important problems of one kind or another?

They miss out the effect of climate changing! Is because it get too hot and too wet and now climate move to appropriate for ENG and they get better and AUS get worse. So by compare looks like the big swing.

Don't blieve me? Check trend for wash out on first class cricket in AUS and ENG for last 10 years, yearly.

Aren't Australia reigning Tri-Nations champions, and haven't they just white-washed the 6 Nations grand slam champions??

I know the OP is talking about mid-long term, but I don't see any form of decline starting in rugby union for Australia if I'm being honest. The nucleus of their side is young, and no other nation cherishes sporting competitiveness quite like Australia.

I wish Scotland were in that sort of decline.

Considering their population Australia were top of a LOT of world sports for a long time. Their cricket was almost untouchable, world class tennis players were coming out of Australia, and ofc their Rugby has been consistently top 3, usually top 2.

You could argue a decline, but as mentioned, things go through peaks and troughs - maybe Australia is just having a slump of it at the moment. It's times like these that test a nations metal. I have a lot of family in Aus and having spent a fair bit of time down there, they'll adapt and be back stronger than ever. They really are a massive sport loving nation.

Athletics as a whole might not be too peachy but you do have the best women's hurdler going. If Pearson doesn't break the world record either this year or next year I'll be suprised. She should be good for at least 1 Aussie gold this summer.

With less people participating in sport due to schools (well in England anyway) seemingly placing less importance on PE and games consoles etc proving a steady draw getting people into rugby isn't going to be simple. They'll just have to find a way to increase the game's identity in Aus.

kiakahaaotearoa wrote:
Sports follow cycles.

Agree.

Sports' popularity follow success Biltong.

The undeniable downturn on Oz sporting achievements was more than encapsulated by their government's timely warning (see OP).

Crisis? Tell that to the 30,000+ Reds fans who turn up to their teams live games. Every country plays a variety of sports, not just Australia.

No doubt just good lobbying of the government by various sports bodies looking for more money. In this global crisis, it's difficult to justify fritting away money on seeming trivial things when cuts are being made elsewhere. Australia is by no means the only one in that situation. Because they have released a report on it does not change that.

Unless I'm missing something, I didn't see a timely warning in that article, rather just a project that has been commissioned to examine trends in Australian sport. It doesn't say anything about how poorly we're doing, rather how best we can take advantage of changes in demographics etc.

In regards to your breakdown on Aus sport, we're not doing too badly. Sure in some of our traditionally strong sports like cricket we're not doing too well right now (read: awful) but we're doing ok in others that we haven't been historically great in. Cadel Evans is the tour de France title holder, Mark Webber just won F1 at Silverstone, and regards tennis, Sam Stosur is the reigning US open tennis champ. Before the Australian cricket team were 'unbeatable' the West Indies were 'unbeatable' for a long time too. As others have said, sport ebbs and flows.