Super Rugby is "starting to claw back Australian crowds and viewers but it still has a long way to go to match the glory days" of '12, according to Wayne Smith of THE AUSTRALIAN. At the end of round 9, the halfway point of the regular season, 301,978 Australians have "attended Super Rugby matches, an improvement of 25,000 on last season." It is a "different story" from the post-World Cup year of '12 when the cumulative crowd figure for all Australian games at this point of the season was 397,921. It is a "similar story for live audience viewers," with 2,960,129 tuning into pay-TV provider Fox Sports, a "substantial increase" on the '15 figure of 2,352,000. But at the corresponding point of '12, "the viewership number stood at 3,513,000." Australian Rugby Union CEO Rob Clarke said, "I think given the previous two years when the trend wasn’t too healthy, to see a turnaround of any nature is a very good result." The figures are, "to some degree, counter-intuitive, because it was expected before the 18-team competition kicked off for the first time this year that the expansion would put a serious dent in Super Rugby numbers." Clarke: "It shows that the concerns that existed prior to the competition kicking off about the competition structure and the schedule being a nightmare, that it was going to be a major negative impact, that hasn’t been borne out by these numbers so far" (THE AUSTRALIAN, 5/5).