Plus Widnes fans have had 20 odd years to save up since their last big cup game...

This was the opportune moment to step away from this particular analogy.

Well yeah, you live and learn. Just be happy I am still fairly new here so have yet to take to start down the path of hurling personal insults at those who disagree with me!

How about this for an analogy.

You go out on a Friday night and splash your hard earned cash for someone else to use their body to entertain you and at the end leave you satisfied?

hey, Widnes fan..........

The serious answer is that in the 18 full seasons since Super League started Widnes fans have had just 1 cup semi final to pay out for and no top grade finals or playoffs (IIRC).

In the same 18 seasons Leeds have had:
13 Challenge Cup Semi Finals
32 Super League Playoff games
7 Challenge Cup Finals
8 Super League Grand Finals
& 6 World Club Challenges

You can see how a Cup semi final might slip down the priority list for people. Especially when it's on the other side of the Pennines, Leeds haven't been playing well and it's on TV.

I'm going. Got 2 tickets today and the woman in the shop said they'd had a big rush on sales today.

I'm in Newcastle on Saturday, might catch it on TV, then again I might do something more productive and go for a nice long walk along the coast.

Being a rugby league fan these days is like being a member of a secret society where details of meetings are whispered from one member to the other, when the RFL give a toss about publicising the game to the great world outside of the M62 corridor then the great world outside the M62 corridor may sit up and take notice, until then, a lingering death where no-one really cares.

I'm watching updates on Twitter and game highlights on t'internet the next day. I do have tickets for the final though

Having lived outside the M62 corridor for over 30 years I can only really recall perhaps a decade that bucked that trend. Lingering death, perhaps. But it'll comfortably linger longer than either you or I, I suspect.

As for a north east coastal walk, if you've never been to Ross Links (about an hour north of Newcastle) I strongly recommend it.

Not heard of that but may seek it out, if not this weekend then on one of the many others on the wife's sabbaticals to her roots, I have all day Saturday to kill and leaving the wife at her sisters, no-one to kill it with, the day spreads out before me in one long empty "must do something fulfilling" space and yet I just know that I'll end up in The Ship at Low Newton, to quote Michael Corleone, "Just when I think I'm out, they pull me back in again..."

Is that the brew pub in the square of white painted cottages where they also do excellent meals?
If so that's a great place to spend a Saturday afternoon, or any afternoon or evening.

I'm going.
Not looking forward to it.
Can't go to Wembley either.


Meh.