Championship attendances are disappointing considering the standard of rugby on display. Fev v Cas and Wigan in the cup set a bench mark for the quality of CC teams.

However there do seem to be slow but definite increases at some clubs, Fev, Halifax and Leigh seem to be pushing towards 2,000 averages. Sheffield also seem to be on the increase to ver 1000 level, which is good for them.

Others though are a mystery. Batley are and have been for several seasons a very good CC team, winning the Northern Rail cup and being in the top four or five in the league, but struggle to get to the 1000 level with their attendances.

My own team, Keighley, on the back of promotion having a decent season and almost certain to make the playoffs are struggling around the 8 to 900 mark with attendances. They deserve more. After the Cougarmania era of 4 to 5000 crowds, you have to think the potential is there.

In CC1 there is only Barrow who have anything like decent attendances. Oldham and Rochdale, such previous strongholds of the game are being surpassed handily in the attendance stakes by the Crusaders. The two West Cumbrian teams, both having won promotion, have dire attendances.

I think a dedicated official at the RFL with a mandate to represent the lower leagues and develop marketing, promotional plans for the CC clubs could not be anything but a positive move.

If the teams in the lower divisions go to the wall in any numbers, the SL will be all that is left of out game and is too small in and of itself to be a significant factor on the national stage. The game needs the larger profile given by having a three division structure.

Exciting yes,passion yes.......but the bottom line is british sports fans are use to promotion and relegation and no matter how people dress it up we are playing matches in the faint hope of getting invited 3 years down the line and the british public have voted in the championships with there feet as simple as that

Last year in C1 Keighley averaged 842 per game, both those West Cumbrian teams with "dire attendances" are comfortably exceeding Keighley's average with Town averaging 944 this year and Haven 863.

As for the CC1 play-offs nobody seems to know what their purpose is this year. The top 4 in the league are all promoted so there's no promotion via the play offs. So is it to decide the league champions ? Well, if so then we could have a team that is crowned champions but not promoted if a team outside of the top 4 wins it, which seems a little bizarre. Then there's the prize money - the league leaders will get £50k but the play-off winners will only get £20k, which would suggest that the league leaders are the champions based on monetary value. Its all a bit confusing really.

Careful Derwent, jonny will have the ' negativity ' police round to see you

"Pushing towards 2,000 averages"?

Fax's so far is 2,206 and Fev's is 2,215. Not sure of Leigh's.

It appears Leighs gates are down by 100s simply because the season ticket price was raised by £40. At the same time the club messed up by playing on a different day almost every home game and thats upset a lot too.

Leigh should try and get back to Sunday afternoons. Friday nights are cack.

I like friday or saturday evening but your probably right, although the corporate looked a sell out last night which is unlikely to happen on sundays.
Fax & fev are the only games i would play on sunday due to the number of fans they bring ,i''m not sure the away support from the other clubs is worth risking losing the corporate side TBH.

....and when we put games like that on a Sunday along come premier sports to move it to a Thursday