Highlanders’ English fly-half Freddie Burns has been left underwhelmed by the attendances in Super Rugby Pacific after moving down south.
The 32-year-old joined the Dunedin outfit from Leicester Tigers, a team that regularly attracts over 20,000 supporters, ahead of the 2023 campaign.
Injury has deprived him of featuring too much on the field, but the ex-England Test player has been watching with interest from the sidelines.
Burns has been impressed by the quality of the players and teams, but that has not been matched off the pitch, according to the playmaker, with the dwindling support-base in Super Rugby.
Surprised
“I think it’s a good product, I think it’s an exciting product….(but) I have been disappointed with attendances,” he told Stuff.
“I know that the geography of the competition makes it harder. It’s not like in England where you can hop in the car and drive for a couple of hours and probably be at most Premiership grounds, but I guess that element [the lack of crowds] took me by surprise.
“I thought there’d be a few more in attendance in the stadiums.”
Burns believes a ‘Drive to Survive’ style documentary could help change the face of the sport going forward.
The Highlanders fly-half believes rugby needs to market itself better and will no doubt hope the upcoming Six Nations docuseries proves to be a hit.
Netflix cameras followed the European teams around in the recent international tournament, but it won’t be released until early next year.
“The problem is how do we draw our eyes to it,” he said. “So, the biggest comparison is that Drive to Survive [series] with the Formula 1,” Burns said.
“People didn’t really care about it [F1], and then suddenly this documentary comes on Netflix and people start to actually see the stuff behind the scenes.
“If you look at Formula 1 it’s racing cars going around the track, and the quickest one wins. It’s pretty boring. But when you actually watch a documentary and learn about the tactics involved in why certain things are done, it actually becomes a pretty exciting sport.
“I feel like people look at rugby and think it’s just 15 pretty dull blokes just trying to run into each other and batter each other up, whereas there’s so much more to it.”
Coronation
Burns was also asked about the recent coronation of King Charles but his response but was pretty abrupt.
“I could give a f*** about it, to be fair,” he said.
“I’m a proud Englishman, but in terms of getting too caught up in all that stuff, I don’t really buy into it too much.
“The pageantry looks good, but when you’ve got people at home and there’s a cost of living crisis … I’m not political, and I’m not trying to make a statement, but I just think there’s other things that money can be spent on rather than putting a crown on some old bloke’s head.”
Click Here: Paulo Dybala Jersey Sale