Careful making sensible suggestions like that. On here it means you hate RL. The only way to prove your love for the greatest game is to either totally deny any problem with attendances or blame it on various, ever more unusual 'external factors'. People don't like ideas, they think we can fix things by cheerleading.

Didn't seem any worse than the 2011 final. Same old story of the club wembley seats being Empty but thats nothing new. One thing I did notice though is that there seemed be a lot less neutrals, Obviously there is a world cup to save up for and times are hard, so not having a pop, but that would be a plausible reason. Hull had a good turnout, The Wigan end probably wasn't as full as 2011, but for fair weather supporters, a possible 4th visit to wembley in a short space meant it probably didn't appeal as it usually would.


Still, Prefer the Millenium stadium. Atmosphere is so much better there.

I agree, also in Cardiff city centre which is a bonus

The official attendance at the CC Final in 2011 was bull too but not quite to the same degree as 2013.

Well the attendance in 2011 according to the bbc website archive was 78,482 , the attendance according the bbc website for yesterdays match was Attendance: 78,137

Hull brought more than leeds did imo, but seemed like less neutrals... which probably evens it out.

Ah, so if you don't like the quoted attendance you just ignore it and make it up? Genius!

Compared to 1954 at Odsal, the sports been screwed for years!

The capacity of Club Wembley is what?

Not sure how much of a positive impact it would have on the attendance, but I think it would be excellent (even though it won't happen) to have a completely fresh final one year with something like Bradford v Cas, or Bradford v Hull KR. Ten years now IIRC since the Bulls were in a Challenge Cup final, too long for a club like that. Very rarely an empty seat in the house when they were in finals (as someone on here used to make reference to in their sig).

There is a difference between suggestions to improve or change and the none stop mantra of fifth columnists.

I'd be fine with the cc as a pre-season competition. I do think it needs to be compressed as a competition for tv audiences. If I had the power I'd be more radical as I think when you look at commercially successful sports they have had to change. Often darts is shown as a sport that has modernized. But they have a smaller pool of talent. Throw a few million at darts players and you have rich household names. A few million at rl just keeps players wages up with inflation.

However it's all a debate for another thread. There are issues regarding money. But in the 100+ years of rl. Current attendances are not dire. They are certainly better than pre SL. The example used in this thread took a one off year and extrapolated that to show a percentage drop. I simply showed that over the full history, since the move to Wembley, since the start of SL it is better than average. And that average includes the guessed mammoth attendances.

If we were looking at a long term low in attendances. I'd have no issue. But we are not. We are at a comparativelow with income generation compared to other sports. That is the sports challenge.

I'm not really sure how moving it to May would help. It would still be a mid season comp and would therefore not have the emphasis and prestige that it used to have. How do you think moving it to may would improve attendances?

In 1982 - the greatest team in the history of the game toured this country the attendances for the tests were:

Test 1 Hull - GB 4 Australia 40 - attendance 26,771
Test 2 Wigan - GB 6 Australia 27 attendance 23,216
Test 3 Leeds - GB 8 Australia 32 attendance 17,318

Let's compare to 2001 - post SL
Test 1 Huddersfield GB 20 Australia 12 attendance 21,758
Test 2 Bolton GB 12 Australia 40 attendance 22,152
Test 3 Wigan GB 8 Australia 28 attendance 25,011

Things were so much better pre SL!!!