Opening SL weekend sees attendances tumbling by 12.66%

William, I'm not suggesting that there aren't problems that need addressing and I actually stated that in my original post.

I was unaware of the Groupon offer, but plucked the Wakefield game out because I happened to be at the corresponding fixture last year and it's a game that I've often attended for various reasons through the years and remember the often terrible gates.

One could look at several other fixtures against teams that Saints haven't traditionally had good crowds against, where this year, the gates are still higher than the corresponding fixtures for all but last years exceptional season. As a side point; There have always been free tickets given away by clubs. When I was at school over the border in Wigan during their glory years I could have attended every match for free if I wanted to as the teachers at school used to regularly receive offers. The people who went though were people who would have gone to the match anyway, and I think with offers such as this, often maybe a thousand is added to the gate, but the people who get the tickets are often people who would attend no matter what, but like a bargain. Whilst the point about the free tickets at Wigan is empirical experience, I seem to recall reading an academic article regarding distribution of free tickets where most attendees would normally have attended whether the ticket was free or not, but I can't find it at the moment.

If we just look back to 2009, Saints crowds this year are still up on that season though without the spectacular growth of last year, and up on 2008, the last year there was P&R and a 12 team division. I don't think a four year window is a suitable time period to identify a long term trend, but even in that period the general trend for Saints crowds is up. I would expect an improvement in the Stadium atmosphere brought on by construction works, plus a more competetive side would contribute to continuing this trend in the next few years.

Anyway, I'm not arguing that things need to be done to improve the league and gates generally in the long term, but that is being looked at by the powers that be.

Our sporting culture is tinged by football, and explaining the current competition to a potential new fan brought up on the culture of home and away is often greeted with the response "but why?".

The current league structure is not "fair", but at least all clubs play each other "home and away" now, though the magic weekend means that it still isn't a level playing field. To my mind the magic weekend should be a one off event, maybe nines, sevens or some truncated version with an overall winner declared at the end, as otherwise we end up with an odd no. of games which inbalances the league. In the old 12 team structure the season wasn't fair on top clubs either. Saints always ended up playing against Wigan 3 times in 3 high intensity games and having too many of these devalues the fixtures. If you want to add games to the end of the season to flesh out the league you need to do something like the SPL do where the league is split somehow after home and away fixtures are complete, and the top and bottom teams then play each other to finalise league placing, or otherwise just play home and away once. The problem with that is there is no incentive for the final 6 games of the season for the bottom placed teams and this would need to be addressed.

The playoff format is way too complicated. I would go with a league split, followed by a top 5 with an automatic place in the final for the league leaders and the other 4 playing off for the final place, or even a top 4 with two semis and a final (1 play 4, 2 play 3), home advantage to the higher placed team.

I also think the rules of the game need to be altered to make scrums competitive and reduce injuries in the game. Reducing the distance between defence and attack 5m or 7m rule would reduce blowout scores, put more emphasis on creative halfback play and handling and reduce the gap created by fitness between top sides and part timers in the cup competetions, rather than forward brute force and ignorance, and make the game easier to justify to outsiders brought up on union and other sports who will otherwise query the illogicality of the scrum as it currently exists, but that's a whole other can of worms outwith the scope of this topic...