COBL_04 said:
No way. Not a chance man!! Soccer is in no way a "far more appealing" sport to Australians than Cricket. Yes there has been a bit of a lapse but in no way has soccer eclipsed cricket. For mine the top three will ALWAYS be AFL, Rugby and Cricket.
Ah, soccer has already eclipsed cricket.
Attendances in Melbourne reveal a lot:
Melbourne Victory - Average of 27,728 for 06/07 season
Victoria Bushrangers - 500 to 600 people for 06/07 season
Soccer: Australia vs Greece @ MCG 2006: 95,103
But, cricket:
Australia vs England ODI @ MCG 06/07: 78,000
Australia vs New Zealand ODI @ MCG 06/07: 48,000
Australia vs England Day One of the Boxing Day Test 2006: 89,155 (so much for eagerley awaited!)
Participation rates:
Children playing soccer: 19.6% of boys, 2.9% of girls
Children playing cricket: 9.9% of boys, 1.2% of girls
Adult participation rate:
Men playing soccer = 4.4%
Men playing cricket = 4.7%
but...
Women playing soccer = 1.8%
Women playing cricket = 0.8%
SBS' National TV audience for 2006 FIFA World Cup:
Australia vs:
Japan - 2.16 million (11pm)
Brazil - 1.53 million (2am!)
Croatia - 2.02 million (5am)
Italy - 2.28 million (1am)
These figures fail to take into account all the people who flocked to pubs and clubs and the big screens across the nation, a spectating culture that is alien to the stale culture of following cricket.
2003 Cricket World Cup Final:
* Australia vs India (mostly shown in prime time on a Sunday night):2.46 million
2007 Cricket World Cup Final:
* Australia vs Sri Lanka: I read somewhere that it never peaked over 1 million.
Cricket, in both a participatory and spectatorship sense, lags behind soccer in terms of appeal. Channel Nine have begun to recognise this, with their decision to no longer screen One Day Domestic matches and their increasing hesitancy to screen matches in the tri-series that don't involve Australia, and the impending scrapping of tri-series ODI cricket after the 07/08 summer.
Cricket is dying, while soccer is finally being recognised for what it always has been, as one of Australia's favourite sports.