Didn't the Man Utd players do the same thing last year?

No.

You are wrong.



Football at the club level is a minority sport, but international football has a huge interest in Australia, as seen in interest in Australia qualifying for the 2014 World Cup in Brazil.



Also although Australian clubs do not have a huge following, foreign prestige clubs like Man U and Barca have a huge following in Australia. Most Australian sports fans have enormous respect for those clubs. Most Australian sports fans will know the name Wayne Rooney, even if they might not recognize his face.



The Match between Manchester United and Australia's A-League All Stars is completely sold out. 83,000 people will be there. So much for your theory of ignorance and indifference.

Lol, having some overpaid soccer numpties attend is going to boost the profile of the biggest game on the sporting calendar in Australia? Yeh right!

Well Jean is certainly excited. What a shame that:



1 - 83,000 "fanatical" ockers will still only really create an atmosphere comparable to perhaps 6,000 at somewhere like Widnes. Ocker crowds are not known for being impressive

2 - SoO is already huge in Aus, so the 'boost' is pretty much lost.

3 - This won't even register in the UK, where if the story ain't the footballer, it ain't a story.

4 - The corporate box is "a nice setup"?? Well finger me a new pipe, that's astonishing.



United players have a long history of admiring RL. Many used to frequent Central Park and some of the current generation also love the game. Rooney has been a Leeds fan since seeing them win at OT a few years ago (iirc).



Embarrassing that some attention seekers think we need football players watching a game in Australia to boost the game in the UK. Or that that would even work.

Those 83,000 fans will mainly be British immigrants, and fruit picking backpackers.



Most Australians I know could not give a fig about football or the under performing Mr Rooney (did he even play in the last World Cup?)

3 posts before a reply - 1 day people surely will just stop replying to these pointless threads.

Really! Dont be fooled

Great idea and you just have to be grateful that it's Utd who are in Aus at the moment. Which other Premier league team could even provide 5 brits from their side, never mind RL fans to boot. Aren't Utd fantastically wonderful.

The artist formerly known as Barry McKenzie needs to do something to keep his attention seeking going and unfortunately creating these pointless threads is just that.

If the thread is "pointless" then I suppose Australia's Fairfax media and Fox News should stop these "pointless" news stories.

As somebody more famous than me once said "any publicity is better than no publicity at all." We all know that Sydney is the capital of Rugby League in terms of media coverage, if it helps back in the UK it can only be a positive.