over a million
This answer is rediculous - With a NZ population of 4,115,771 (2006 Census) This means that there is one Rugby club for every 4 people (male, female, young old, or ancient.)
In 2009 NZRU stated that there were 145,472 active players!
Can someone more informed give me the correct answer?
No, the All Blacks are selected from all New Zealander players. The New Zealand Maori representative side is selected from Maori players.
OK, if you look at Males only and exlcude rugby league, which has a further 22,000 players but the detailed stats are not available, you can make the following estimations. Population of new zealand is approx 4.2million, of whom approx 129,000 pre-teen, teen and adult males are registered with the NZRFU as rugby players - i.e. 3.1% of the total population. The NZRFU recognises the U-7 age group, so if we these 129,000 players are all aged 7 - 40 years, this means they are drawn from about 870,000 people according to the 2006 NZ census. So as a proportion of male population aged 7 - 40 about 129,000 out of 870,000, or 15% play rugby. You can make some assumptions and chuck in the 22,000 who play Rugby League and the aggregate League/ Union figure rises to more like 17%. In reality, there is probably a big player number drop off after the age of 30, when guys start getting families, not to mention sore, so can't spend their saturdays playing. This would increase the percentage further, so it could be as high as 20% of males aged 7 - 30 in NZ play rugby.
Because New Zealanders are touugh! Football players are wussy, American footballers wussy in comparison. New Zealanders have to fight the bitter south, and the only other tough rugby team is South Africa. This is because South Africans have to fight off blicks and lions and some of them live in the desert. Australians don't live in the desert so they aren't tough. So tough Kiwis prefer rugby, and traditionally it involved a lot more fighting and drinking: Kiwis and Australians are good at that. I don't if South Africans are good at drinking but they are also good at fighting. Australia's main sport is Rugby League which is possibly even touugher than Rugby Union.
Rugby is New Zealand most popular sport. The All Blacks is the rugby team that represents New Zealand
The silver fern. The New Zealand rugby league team is known as the Kiwis
from the AGm results for 2011 there appears to be 3000 players registered
There are 122,598 registered rugby union players in japan.
New Zealand are arguabbly the best rugby nation in the world.
England have the most registered cubs with 2,549,196 players in 2099 clubs
There are 21,587 registered rugby union players in Canada as of January 2009 There are 21,587 registered rugby union players in Canada as of January 2009
In 2013, there were around 51,000 registered adult rugby players in Australia. Not all of these people actively play and this is only the adults who are registered. There are about 302,000 registered kids.
rugby because there are more nations that play
England have the most registered players with 2.5 million
England RFU has the most
In New Zealand, yes
ALOT, I recon you cann't say.
New Zealand