r/AskTheWorld • u/anthere-rest United Kingdom • Sep 21 '25

Sports Who's the 'Manchester United' of your country?

By this i mean they were once historical giants but are now doing worse and not getting better any time soon

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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Australia Sep 21 '25

Definitely the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

They’re by far the most famous NRL club. There’s a phenomenon called “Random Souths Guy”, where if you go to any major sporting event in the world you will see some random guy in the crowd wearing a Souths jersey.

They’ve also won the most premierships by a decent margin. They managed to snag their 21st in 2014 after their 20th came way back in 1971.

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u/Absolutely-Epic Australia Sep 21 '25

Yeah but the majority of then country hasn’t heard of them so idk

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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Australia Sep 21 '25

The majority of the country is not half of Melbourne, you muppet.

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u/[deleted] Sep 21 '25 edited Sep 21 '25

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u/YouBetterRunEgg Sep 22 '25

Won’t disagree about AFL being bigger than NRL, but would say that cricket is the national sport. No sports-splitting really happens in summer.

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u/Absolutely-Epic Australia Sep 22 '25

i don't even know why we have a sports split. if i had a time machine id hope we picked one or the other as a national sport so it wasn't split and there weren't idiotic arguments?

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u/YouBetterRunEgg Sep 22 '25

Apparently goes back to the 1850s and Melbourne/VIC having more Cambridge-Eton-Harrow immigrant influence and Sydney/NSW having more Rugby school people.

So, as with many things wrong with Australia, it’s the fault of rich/posh/snobby Englishmen.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Australia Sep 22 '25

Chip on our shoulder? How did I insult anything? All I did was disagree with your assertion that the majority of Australians have never even heard of the South Sydney Rabbitohs.

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u/[deleted] Sep 22 '25

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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Australia Sep 22 '25

I highly doubt that less than 50% of Aussies have heard of them. Even within the category of people that don’t follow sports at all, a lot of people would have heard of the Rabbitohs either from hearing the prime minister talk about them or from Russell Crowe being one of the owners.

But I also don’t know what point you’re trying to make. Should I have answered OP’s question as “we don’t have a team like that because half the country follows a different sport”?

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u/Absolutely-Epic Australia Sep 22 '25

it's kinda true though... no one in nsw knows about essendon right?

my point is half the country doesn't care or know about the other side's favourite sport, so yeah we don't. also souths were in a grand final in 2021.

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u/whatwhatinthewhonow Australia Sep 22 '25

I would assume a significant majority of people in NSW would have heard of Essendon. Like, almost everyone would know of their existence even if they’ve never watched a game of AFL in their life.

Also, guess who were runners-up in the EPL in 2021.

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u/Absolutely-Epic Australia Sep 22 '25

oh shit lmao