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Waratahs-Southern Kings match attracted lowest home crowd in club's history

Tom Decent
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Waratahs and NSW Rugby Union chief executive Andrew Hore accepts it will take some time to restore faith among fans after the Waratahs recorded their lowest home crowd of all time last Friday.

The 10,555 fans at the Waratahs match against the Southern Kings was the lowest home figure in the club's 21-year history in what is turning out to be a horror year for NSW on and off the field.

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The Waratahs had everything going for them against the Kings with an early lead, but after the second-half things went sour as the visitors clinched a 24-26 win.

Compared to last year, crowd numbers are down 29 per cent at the halfway mark of the season, an alarming statistic for Hore and his NSW administrators.

Last year the Waratahs averaged 19,830 fans a game, compared to 14,164 this season, a figure that is even worse than their lowest average of 14,542 in 2013.

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"Do I feel we can build crowds? Yes I do," Hore told Fairfax Media. "Is it going to take a little bit longer to get back to some form of what you call solid crowds? Yeah, I think we're going to have to try and build people's faith in us again.

"For the remainder of this year … if we had a really good performance against the Reds, I still think it'll be slow against the Blues, but we can build some momentum."

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The Waratahs claim the lowest crowd was actually a match in 2012 against the Hurricanes. On that night, in a game the Waratahs lost 33-12, the official crowd figure was reported as 13,372, however a Waratahs spokesperson said the actual figure was 10,196, citing a Ticketek report from the evening.

Nonetheless, the writing was on the wall in round one against the Western Force when just 11,964 fans braved poor weather to watch the Waratahs at Allianz Stadium.

That number was marginally better than the 11,206 who showed up for the first game of the 2013 season between NSW and the Melbourne Rebels, in what was Israel Folau's first outing in a Waratahs jersey.

And while the Kings are certainly not the biggest drawcards, the fact the number of people who came to watch the Waratahs only barely hit five figures shows the declining interest of rugby in Sydney.

Hore justified the number by pointing to a tough Sydney sporting market as well as a negative perception of Super Rugby and Australian rugby at the moment.

"There's no doubt it wasn't a great crowd, but I just find in your competitive Sydney market, if people don't know the teams, and on top of that you put down a poor performance, it's probably why we need some governance change," Hore said.

"If we use the weekend as an example … Australian people seem to know the bigger names in South Africa rugby, but to know the Kings, who they then know are potentially going to get cut, haven't won a game, playing against a team whose form hasn't been good, you've got all of those variables."

Of the four games in Sydney this season, the Waratahs-Crusaders clash attracted the biggest crowd with 18,227 people making their way to Moore Park earlier this month.

The Australian derby against the Brumbies, which was supposed to be the biggest drawcard of the year given the Waratahs only face the Reds away from home this season, drew 15,911 fans.

Granted, the Waratahs have been hit hard by bad weather. In three of their four matches at home, rain has deterred fans.

But it is fair to say the performance of Daryl Gibson's men has had a profound impact on crowd numbers. 

In 2012, the Waratahs won just four matches from 16 attempts. This year, NSW have racked up two wins from eight games in what has been their worst start to a season in the Super Rugby era.

The most concerning thing, however, is those 10,555 fans last week would have been banking on a comfortable Waratahs win to kick-start their season. 

The Waratahs put in one of their most embarrassing performances to slump to a shock defeat 26-24 against the Kings, who had won just a solitary match in 2017 prior to that. 

By comparison, the Force attracted 8474 fans for their clash with the Kings this year in Perth, but Hore said even that wasn't a great number.

"People are galvanising and I think that's really good for them," Hore said. "Eight-and-a-half-thousand – when you look at the numbers Queensland, Brumbies and probably NSW used to pull in the heyday – it still isn't big." 

Next Saturday the Waratahs host the Auckland Blues, the only New Zealand outfit with more losses than wins this year (three victories, five defeats).

A win in Brisbane against the Reds this Saturday is critical, otherwise fans won't keep speaking with their feet. 

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