It is, however many of your views are shared by few

There's been just one 100k gate, and it wasn't at Wembley. The Cup Final crowds have remained pretty similar for decades, the difference is in the earlier rounds and especially the semis where the crowds have dropped off.

You are indeed correct, it was interesting that in the decade of decline 78-88 whilst the capacity was high 8 gates were above 90k with a high of 99,801, not quite 100k. Is that period in your 'decades'?

Yes it does.
The average crowd for a Wembley final from 1945/46 (when it leapt in popularity) to 1999 is about bang on 83,000.

The average crowd for a Wembley final in the new Wembley is roughly 81,500.

So 80,000 paying souls in a stadium 200 miles from the clubs' "heartlands",with a few more million watching it live on freeview/terrestrial. A clear sign that the Cup is dead.

Yep. I blame the RFL.

I understand the 80k paying souls includes those that didn't go but have club wembley etc and hence have already paid for the CCF in the debenture. These were obviously not used to inflate crowds in the good old days before the RFL ruined life in general. I too blame the RFL.

Thats because it was not the same teams getting there year in year out you had Cas, Hull KR, Fev, Fax, Widnes, Wakefield and Hull getting there but since SL its been dominated by 4 clubs Bradford, Leeds, St Helens, Wigan and now you can add a 5th in Warrington. Plus the game was still well supported in now forgotten (by SL fans and the RFL) places like Halifax, Oldham, Barrow and Featherstone.
Fax took 30K plus fans in 1987 and about as many in 1988 cos it was and maybe still is a RL town.
I go every year have done since 1978 and I have noticed a big decline in fans of the other clubs that used to go as neutrals and you never saw that many empty seats all around the stadium, yer you had some clubs not as well supported but now some people don't even attend the game but must have bought a ticket or been given a complimentary one.
Blimey they have to offer discounts and free tickets for buying so many now and still cannot get the crowds that Wembley got back in the eighties and nineties, yet the RFL claim the game is expanding!
The RFL are deluded but I am sure some on here will say I am a dinosaur and shout me down cos they believe everything the RFL tell them. If you think inflating crowds is a good thing take a look at our bitter rivals over the hill = Bradford and how it is nearly killing them for selling half price season tickets just so they can publish bigger crowd figures!

Me too, i definitely blame the RFL for the FA selling the club Wembley seats to help fund the 2nd largest stadium in Europe at a cost of £800m. That bloody Richard Lewis. He is lucky he left before people find out WRU selling debentures to fund the building of the Millenium Stadium and Arsenal selling them to fund the emirates, the bounder.

Its frightening how many people are keen to let the RFL off the hook for their lack of inspiration, lack of leadership, and abandonment of the areas where people (used to?) care about Rugby League. My 'favourite' is "how can it be the RFL's fault if fans dont want to turn up?" That's as useless as a shopkeeper saying its not his fault nobody buys his stuff, and just as likely to cause stagnation and decline in a fog caused by a general lack of self-awareness.

Given the RFL have introduced a salary cap at the top level, how is it then their fault that teams haven't been able to exploit that levelling of the competition? The reason why those teams have been successful is because they have invested in good coaching set ups to enable this. Admittedly these clubs have bigger finances that the rest but what is stopping the others clubs from building their businesses to compete? Aside from the management of the game, with the salary cap how are the RFL then responsible for the underperformance of some teams?