A recent survey found 1,255,000 New Zealanders aged 10 or over were interested in rugby, about a third of the population. This is 11 per cent down on last year.
A recent survey found 1,255,000 New Zealanders aged 10 or over were interested in rugby, about a third of the population. This is 11 per cent down on last year.
Let's clear one matter up. Toni Bruce likes footy.
"I was raised to be a rugby fan," says the sports sociologist.
"In the womb I was kicking so hard my father thought I was going to be the All Blacks goalkicker, which didn't quite turn out to be true."
Her explanation was offered - with a warm laugh - after Auckland University issued a press statement last week with the provocative headline "Rugby World Cup a turnoff for many".
In terms of timing, the intervention - a summary of her research on New Zealanders' attitudes towards the Cup - threatened to spoil the party. The idea that a "silent majority" didn't particularly care about the tournament - or that some would be "secretly pleased" if the All Blacks lost - would not win over new friends in a nation roused from slumber and sweating on the result of an 80-minute contest.
Bruce feels her study got a little lost in translation. She was not saying that a majority of New Zealanders didn't like rugby, only that a slight majority of those who completed an online survey weren't that fussed about the Cup. And she says the project was not claiming to be representative of the country as a whole, but that the dominant World Cup narrative that everybody loved the game was not the only one.
"I'm trying to understand how people feel about rugby as opposed to how the media tells us people feel," she explained.
"I've discovered this group, that might be bigger than most people think, either don't actually care for rugby or feel oppressed by the way they're told that everybody in New Zealand loves rugby."
Bruce accepts that tossing the early survey results into the final Cup week could have been seen as incendiary. But it had the desired effect: the publicity generated a whole lot more responses.
The 56-year-old knows how to press buttons. Raised on a Port Waikato sheep farm, Bruce was a journalist before she became an academic.
In Hamilton, with the Waikato Times newspaper during the 1981 Springbok tour, she said she had the "pro-tour" round.
After her OE, which ended with summer camp volunteer work in the States with poor kids from Chicago, she returned to study and go deeper into the ways that activity and sport could make a difference in people's lives. She did a doctorate in Illinois and worked her way back home through several teaching posts.
Her academic work, often done in collaboration, has generated dozens of peer-reviewed papers, many with arresting titles. There was 'She's not one of us': Cathy Freeman and the place of Aboriginal people in Australian national culture; Never let the bastards see you cry; Speaking the unspoken: racism, sport and Maori; and, after the 2011 cup, (Not) a stadium of four million: speaking back to dominant discourses of the Rugby World Cup in New Zealand.
Now an associate professor at Auckland University's faculty of education and social work, Bruce's World Cup survey is in its third edition.
Each survey, says Bruce, had produced consistent results in that slightly more than half the respondents were not heavily invested in the All Blacks winning the cup. Of the 806 submissions in the 2015 survey, 46 per cent said it was "important" or "very important" that the All Blacks won.
"What the work suggests is not that they don't like rugby, although it's true some don't. What it says is they feel they're being told they are not good New Zealanders if they don't like rugby."
Toni Bruce, associate professor at Auckland University's faculty of education and social work.
The evidence? Well, feedback to the current survey found a vein of vexation.
One submitter who didn't care for the game was aggrieved to be made to feel like a "leper".
A 49-year-old woman responded: "I cannot wait until it is over and we don't have to hear about it at all, or see some All Black doing the media PR things that they do to try and convince us that they are the real NZ.
"I do not see myself as an All Black, they don't represent me or my country or my values or aspirations for my children. They represent everything I dislike about NZ."
A man, aged 61, told Bruce: "Back in the old days, when news was news and rugby a game played by amateurs, an event like this would have been followed with interest but not hysteria." He felt the Cup was an excuse for "lazy media outlets to not report actual news. Bread and circuses, anyone?"
Quite a few felt they couldn't avoid the suffocating black tide. One respondent was irritated that Air New Zealand's lolly basket had black sweets; another complained it was impossible to escape because black milk containers filled her fridge.
"Quite a few said they'd be happy to see the All Blacks win, but they were sick of it. In other words a lot was about the wave after wave of media coverage."
Let's not forget, though, that the game retains a loyal fan base, which was clear from respondents praying for an All Blacks victory.
"We hang a lot on sport," Bruce remarked. "Rallying around the All Blacks is a point of national pride. It's a place where we can say we're the best in the world. The support is not necessarily for rugby, but for a team that has a long history of success and allows us to feel good as a nation."
But a sense that Bruce's survey is not too far off the mark comes from the market research company Nielsen. Its most recent survey found 1,255,000 New Zealanders aged 10 or over were interested in rugby, about a third of the population. This is 11 per cent down on last year and a long way from 2007, when the survey estimated there were 1.78 million New Zealand rugby fans.
Last Sunday morning, Bruce, like countless other New Zealanders, got up to watch the final. "We were jumping around after they won."
She says her reaction reflected the power of sport to galvanise emotion, and especially national feelings. "It's a kind of magical thing but while it's uniting certain parts of the community, it's marginalising others."
Bruce says she hopes her work might encourage the media to reflect on the way they present the national game to their audience.
"We need to acknowledge that there are people who just aren't interested and don't like the way it consumes the energy of the nation. Their stories just don't exist at these times."
Her suggestion: "I guess I'd say, hey, there's a group out there which you need to recognise and acknowledge. Be kind to them, or at least be aware of them."
Are we still in love with rugby?
Lindsay Knight, veteran rugby journalist and author:
Journalist and Ranfurly Shield Historian, Lindsay Knight. Photo / Paul Estcourt
"Do New Zealanders still have the same love of rugby as in the 1950s and 60s when the game was touted as the country's chief religion?
The acclaim for the All Blacks in our three biggest cities, when they returned this week from their World Cup triumph, would suggest the answer is yes, as would the widespread enthusiasm four years ago when this country hosted the tournament.
Yet there is a qualification, especially for those aged 60-plus for whom rugby was always part of our psyche. Times have changed from when fans camped out, even in winter, to secure tickets for matches against the Springboks or the Lions.
So have the country's demographics. Auckland, for instance, is now a cosmopolitan city with an ethnic and cultural diversity where rugby is not the only sporting interest.
The make-up of the All Blacks, headed by Richie McCaw and Dan Carter, shows that the country's rugby strength is in rural New Zealand and small towns.
Rugby itself has changed radically. It has switched from staunch adherence to amateurism to full-on professionalism, prompted in large measure by having to accommodate the power of global television.
Professionalism has brought a rapid rise in playing skills and in physique, with the modern player now a gladiator. Today's All Blacks, against their legendary predecessors of even 20 years ago, would win handsomely.
A price has been paid, though, as media and administrators have concentrated almost solely on the game's top-end in pursuit of commercial dollars. The recreational, community base has suffered and, ironically, when some superstars are multi-millionaires, clubs and provincial unions struggle for survival.
Still, when the All Blacks played with the power and skill shown in this World Cup, there must be a re-stirring of all the old passion."
Steve Hale, Radio Sport host, co-captain, Te Aroha Cobras:
Steve Hale aka Bull Hale. Photo / Instagram
"The first big game I attended was Thames Valley vs Australia at Rhodes Park in 1986. Our forwards hoed into the Wallabies by fair means and foul. I went straight home afterwards, to play on the back lawn imagining I was one of the Silvester twins, warriors of the Valley front row.
Quite ironically I made my senior rugby debut eight years later and found myself scrummaging against Raymond Silvester. The term baptism of fire springs to mind. Years later Ray and his lovely wife Toni attended our wedding. There's a great mutual respect in the rugby fraternity, earned through deeds, not words.
Before my knees, hips and lower back cried no more I spent several seasons playing abroad. All I can say is that if anyone thinks rugby is overstated in New Zealand, they obviously haven't been to South Wales! I was lucky enough to anchor a front row alongside two psychotic brothers from Swansea. The Welsh Silvesters I called them. We remain best friends to this day.
It takes fanatical commitment to keep rugby alive in rural areas. When Te Aroha Junior Rugby play Mercury Bay (which can be three times a season) it involves a 295km round trip over the Coromandel Ranges. It's actually quicker for us to drive to Auckland.
This sacrifice goes on all over New Zealand, every Saturday in winter. Some of the biggest names in All Black history hail from obscure, rural areas. Richie McCaw and Colin Meads spring to mind.
My son learned to count from numbers on the backs of rugby jerseys hanging on our washing line. I kid you not. His subsequent passion for maths is thanks to the statistics of sport. What a great way to teach maths to boys.
Our clubrooms in Te Aroha are regularly used to host yoga classes, quiz nights, birthdays, freezing workers union meetings and funerals. Rugby in rural areas is far bigger than the game itself. The club is a place for families to meet, where friendships are maintained, and loyalties formed and values preserved.
Rugby has had a profound and hugely positive effect on my life. Long may it continue."
