
You're really in rugby union and swans territory in Randwick.
I've lived on the south-eastern edge of the CBD for about twenty years now (though grew up in the suburbs). Other than on game days, where you see some fans leaving the SCG or SFS for town in their team's colors, I find you see very few people wearing club merchandise as street wear. Occasionally you see rabbitohs, roosters, wallabies or swans merchandise.
Sydney's pretty segmented. There is relatively little rugby league presence in the city, the eastern suburbs or the north shore. Most people I encounter these days, if sport comes up, tend to be interested mostly in union, the swans or both.
I also don't find rugby league to be as strong in Sydney as is commonly perceived. I attended schools in Strathfield (middle-ring western suburbs) and Bellevue Hill (eastern suburbs) and lived in the hills district (part of Parramatta Eels territory, which was my league team) as well as upper and lower north shore. As a young kid, I lived near Newcastle, where rugby league definitely is strong. In the eastern suburbs and north shore I encountered quite a lot of prejudice toward rugby league, usually from rugby union enthusiasts or people who didn't like sport at all. This rubbed me the wrong way and kept me motivated to follow league for longer than I probably would have otherwise. (There was also prejudice in Newcastle against Australian Football, but being only little kids at the time, I put less stock in that.) The hills district seemed pretty open to league, though I still wouldn't have said it was particularly strong in that area.
I'm not questioning league's number 1 status in Sydney. That's undoubted. But it is certainly not akin to the dominance of AFL in Melbourne or Adelaide. Even forgetting about crowds, just compare the free-to-air TV ratings in Mel/Ade for the first week of AFL finals with the week 1 NRL ratings in Sydney. Adelaide has about a quarter of Sydney's population, yet got 56 percent of Sydney's numbers (a total of 652k compared with 1157k over the four games). Sydney's total was only 61 percent of Melbourne's (1892k).
The Swans v Giants free-to-air ratings in Sydney are perhaps indicative of the potential for AFL as well: 157k in the afternoon (graveyard shift TV-ratings wise) compared with 249k and 264k for the NRL night games. A fair chunk of the difference is made up by the 60k crowd.
Cheers for the insight mate. It's my first time ever in Sydney so I just expected to see team gear on display in the lead up to the Giants Vs Swans final.