As the Warriors mark one of their best seasons, rugby league finds new crowds and loyal fans delight in a rare run of victory
appears to be souring on men’s rugby union – the game that has for so long dominated as the ‘national sport’. Few countries, according to, “identify their nation so strongly” with a single sport as Aotearoa does with rugby union. Yet attendance at domestic matches is in decline as the country re-energises its love of rugby league and its local team, with the first four home games the Warriors’ played in 2023 attracting an average attendance surpassed only by their inaugural season.
argued this year “suggests rugby is beginning to lose the narrative, as it faces increasing competition from other sports”.For Brendan Walsh, 49, the game of rugby union has been “destroyed” by a surfeit of new rules. When the Warriors aren’t playing, he prefers to watch any other NRL game over Super Rugby. Walsh bought his first Warriors’ season ticket in 2013 and by the following year he was painting his face for every game and attending as his alter ego, Rocker Warrior.
“Some people had never been to a Warriors game before … They were just blown away,” he says. When the Warriors played in Napier earlier in the season, McLean Park sold out for the first time since the All Blacks beat Argentina there in 2014.By the fourth round of the season Walsh, an air-conditioning draughtsman, knew there was something different about this Warriors team.
Raena, a machine operator, has been dragged into the slipstream of her husband’s passion – away from a rugby background. She says there is a sense of justice to the Warriors’ success this year, after Covid kept the team in Australia, away from family, friends and fans, for much of the past two seasons. That success is reverberating through the community.
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