Earlier this month, the New Zealand Rugby Union released figures showing there had been a growth in playing numbers of 7% over the past four years.
Nationally, the NZRU had a total of 149,978 players this year.
The Otago Rugby Football Union said 7505 men, women and children were registered to play rugby with the union this year.
ORFU general manager Richard Kinley said the figures showed a 3% increase in players aged 21 and over, while players aged from 13-20, an area of focus for the NZRU, remained roughly the same at 2535.
Junior numbers were down by about 7%, but that was linked to the tough financial times faced by the union.
The union used to run rippa rugby programmes throughout the province but, because it got into financial difficulties earlier this year, it had to curtail these programmes.
Kinley said despite this drop, junior club rugby still appeared to be quite strong and clubs registered good playing numbers in junior grades.
Coaching numbers had also dropped slightly but Kinley said the decrease was small.
Volunteer numbers had shown a good rise - 10% - which Kinley said showed people were keen to be involved in the game.
The biggest concern for the union was getting enough referees to control games.
The union wanted to have a referee for every game from the under-14 grade and above and had struggled at times to do that this season.
Kinley said he had talked about getting appointing a rugby education officer who would try to recruit more referees. The last referee officer, Todd Pullar, had not been replaced when he left earlier this year.
There had actually been an increase in playing numbers of those aged 21 and over, and Kinley said this was heartening and showed club rugby was in good heart.
Nationally, participation was the highest it had been since official numbers were first collated in 2000.
The number of teenagers playing the game had grown, albeit moderately, by 0.5%, on a national scale.
In the other major team sports in Otago, netball had shown a slight rise while football and hockey had dropped.
Netball had about 6240 players this season, an increase of about 1%.
Junior football playing numbers had risen substantially in the past year and Football South had 3283 registered players in the Dunedin area from juniors to adults.
That did not include those who play futsal and in a secondary school grade. That was a drop of less than 1% from the previous year.
Hockey New Zealand's annual report showed there had been a 16% drop in playing numbers from 2010 to 2011 in the Otago region, with just over 1700 playing Cricket at just under 5500 players has stayed relatively stable over the past few years.
Playing numbers in Otago
Rugby... 7505
Netball... 6240
Cricket... 5460
Football... 3283
Hockey... 1735
