The whole world knows Rugby.
This is not strictly correct. To say that "the whole world knows Rugby" is to make an assumption that is not based on fact. Given the millions of people in remote areas of Asia and Africa, it would actually be less than 50% of the world who know about Rugby. this is also factoring the millions of people in developed nations who neither know about, nor care about, the existence of Rugby.
Rugby is the largest played and most popular organised sport in NZ but golf and fishing have more participants.
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all of them
how many dutch people live in nz
There are 4,306,400 people in nz
Soccer in NZ is a minority sport, after Rugby, cricket, netball, fishing...There are 500 football clubs in NZ, with 8 provincial teams in the only semi-professional league - the NZ Football Championship.NZ has one team in the Australian A-League - the Wellington Phoenix - which are the only fully-professional team in NZ.Soccer is the second most popular sport at secondary school with boys, with girls it represents only 6% of sport.The estimate is that around 80,000 people of all ages and sexes play soccer, out of a population of around 4.2M
7,200
Sir Richard Hadlee NZ Cricket player Sir Richard Hadlee NZ Cricket player
Soccer is the most popular winter sport in NZ, more kds play soccer than rugby
12 people
4,319,932 people! And counting ....
I'm writing this as a rugby-loving South African. I believe my reasoning is correct because we South Africans are in a similar position to NZ regarding popularity of rugby. NZ is a relatively small country, and thus do not have the resources (financial but especially people) to support many sports at world class level. Thus, they focus their efforts on a sport that they have played very successfully for a long time. You begin to get a 'virtuous circle' effect that as the teams perform better, the sport becomes more popular, more people and sponsors get involved in the sport, facilities train people from a younger age, causing teams to advance even further, resulting in the sport becoming ever more popular. Because of their success at the sport, the country's culture has becomes somewhat tied in with the sport.