Bit like magic weekend though. How many welsh and Italian (I know) fans didn't bother with the first game. If they all had to be in for the first kickoff it would be an accurate look at size of crowd.

Sporting life confirms. www.sportinglife.com/rugby-league/results 45,052

Sporting life confirms. www.sportinglife.com/rugby-league/results 45,052

Not fantastic but equally not disappointing. Reasonable crowd for a game played outside of the heartlands on a day when football is on at near enough same time (pretty sure a lot of Leeds football fans may have chosen derby v Hudds over rugby for instance).

Certainly better than expectations. Be nice to get above 5k for Craven Park tomorrow.

A record for a WC opening game and, I imagine, a record for an International in Wales. Both decent games too.

I think its a decent crowd, but if they hold a game like that there again they need to work on some better transport options such as coaches from the heartlands and special trains. The cost of hotels and not wanting to go there and back there in a day put me off attending. Had there been an option of getting a coach, or a train from Leeds at a decent price i'd have been there.

45k is a very good effort when it's a non-heartland game. I noticed plenty of southern accents and plenty of Welsh, which was probably a key aim of holding it there.

Could we have got more people down? Of course. But Cardiff was buzzing, RL shirts everywhere- a good advert for the game on and off the pitch in my view.

Leeds were putting coaches on from Headingley for £5.
It's disappointing more clubs couldn't be bothered to make some money from this event and put coaches on.

It was OK. Not amazing, but not bad. Importantly, it also looked like someone had been smart enough to make sure the sections that the cameras were mostly pointing at were as full as possible. I've seen almost the exact opposite in the past. It did sound really quiet on the BBC which was a pity, but from another thread it sounds like the BBC got something wrong there.

Fair play to Leeds for putting on the coaches, but at 5 quid a head, I'm not sure much money was made!

To be fair the 5 quid was if you also bought a ticket to the game through Leeds, so the whole price was 35 or 45 quid depending on whether you wanted a £30 or £40 match ticket. If you wanted travel only it was £30.
I think they got 4 or 5 coaches going.

But the point is that there was an opportunity to make money there and, whilst I've not extensively researched it, it seems like few clubs bothered.

Spot on. One of my most enjoyable RL days out. The atmosphere was absolutely electric, shame it sounds like it didn't come across as this on the BBC.

As one of the 45k, all I can say is that anybody who didn't go missed out. The whole day was spot on. Cardiff did us proud.

45k is not a bad result at all. Good start, let's hope for sell out semis and final.

I thought it was an excellent crowd, more than the final in 2000 iirc

Great work all concerned and definitely progress.

Very high proportion of the crowd seemed to be "non-traditional", which could be seen as a good or bad thing depending on whether you want to focus on the interest from outside the game, or the lack of support from inside the game. Our train back to Manchester was absolutely rammed when it left Cardiff but was almost empty after Hereford.

The "outsiders" sat near me absolutely loved it. Some Welsh RU fans behind were groaning at the force of pretty much every tackle.