That is a pretty crap pure matter of opinion to have. Rugby is good, just like cricket !
Well, it's all a matter of opinion, but in what other sport is a penalty given because a bloke has one sleeve of his vodafone (sorry wallaby) jersey pulled down and the other up, and entered from the side of a ruck at an angle of 57 degrees instead of the allowable 48?
And in what other football code or sport in general, does a side trailling 22 -nil before half time get a free kick and elect to take a shot at goal (western Force last weekend in Super 14), or one side scores 4 tries to 1 or 2 and gets beaten becuse some batty boy can place kick a footy form 55 metres out? I thought the object of the game was to score tries.
I have this theory re. rugby in Australia, where I'm from. It's different in Jaapie land and Kiwi ville because it's the dominant footy code in those places, but while ever the rugby union in this country continues to pull the vast majority of its players from elite private schools where blokes are born with silver spoons in their cloacas and are largely mummy's boys who get driven to and from school each day in air conditioned mercs and bmw 4wds, we will never have a side hard enough to consistently compete with the all blacks and sprinboks. It may be that we have the occasional golden era a la the 1990s where there was just a confluence of the astrological signs to give ius Eales, Gregan (at his best), Willie O, Lynagh, Farr-Jones and Larkham either all at once or one after the other, but long term, it just won't cut it.
As a cure for insomnia, however, it has no peers.
Edit: on topic at hand, no I don't think it is ore popular or has 3 billion viewers. It may have 100 million people who for reasons known only to themselves see fit t sit through 30 games, but I would have thought that any sport which is popular in a country with a population of more than 1 billion (cricket) would have an enormous head start in terms of watching figures).
You can get rid of the Australian union players though.