I'm not forcing anyone to see it the same way as me that's just how I see it. I'd rather see larger crowds at established clubs than at London/Catalan for example.

Why? In what way are Catalan not an 'established club'?

The original idea behind the MW was expansion, I think that aim has now been abandoned, however as an event it works quite well and any ' success ' is vital to the sports continuity and potential growth, so it works so try all you can to make it work better and bigger

Well there are 12 Heartland clubs compared to 2 outside of them and sorry an "Established Top Flight Club".

But success for London and Catalan doesn't come at the expense of 12 other clubs. I want all clubs to have good crowds. Anyway, the Magic weekend was previously held in Wales and Scotland, not London and France so I'm not sure what it has to do with them.

Hire another stadium and make the Quarter finals a day event, let sky and bbc show them at the same time.

Too many events and you'll start to dilute the effectiveness of them

They were just part of the point I put across about Super League not being multicultural enough for them. I would never wish that London and Catalan had bad crowds and Catalan have great crowds at the minute I think. I hope that one day there will be enough teams with good crowds in Europe to form a league similar to the Magners league that Union has.

It's a scrumdiddlyumptious televisual feast that allows one a perfect excuse to veg out on the sofa over the bank holiday eating copious amounts of pistachio nuts and bowls of strawberries drenched in carnation milk with a sprinkling of Tate & Lyle's finest.

It's a bit like watching too much porn though. After the fourth match it gets a "bit samey" and you long for something out of the ordinary to pop up on screen. Move over Sylvia Saint, hello Steve Ganson. What a "cock-up".

For the neutral it's a great weekend. Long may it continue.

Absolutely spot on... Even winning a league game at an event like this means more somehow... Look how we celebrated....

rlhttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v

Now... If this is how we enjoy a late winning try at an event like this... Imagine how we are going to be if we actually win something.

Using the Magic Weekend for expansion was never going to have anything other than very limited short-term impact in the local areas. A few hundred locals might attend, but otherwise you just have 50-60k fans travelling in, drinking in local establishments and staying in local hotels, watching the games behind closed doors and travelling home again. Good for the local economy but little else.

Hosting the Magic as a festival of RL is a much better idea. I thought it was fantastic. Nothing I could fault about it, even the weather turned out again. The food & drink prices are normal for a sporting stadium or similar big event and as much as some might complain it's not like they were a surprise.

The banter in the crowd was good-natured and friendly - in fact I didn't witness any tension at all. Considering many people drank all day, that's a credit to every fan that attended. For me the atmosphere was far friendlier and without the underlying tension of the Grand Final, in fact I'd be happy for the GF to be moved there, even with a slightly lower attendance.

And another note, I thought the minute's silence for Lee Rigby was very touching. The spontaneous round of applause and well observed silence was moving.

Well done all concerned. (except Ganson )

Small note to those saying the crowds haven't grown with the move to Etihad, perhaps you haven't noticed but a lot of the country are on their uppers...lets wait a couple of years till the current mob if unelected posh boys have finished dicking us then see how it gets on

The magic weekend is a superb event for the fans and it is an excellent carnival-style atmosphere with the fans of all 14 teams mingling in the bars and in the ground. My only reservations with it in it's current state is what it actually acheives in terms of the league table. The fixtures were much less mis-matched this season than when it has been kept as derby games but I still don't really like a fixture calendar that involves playing one team 3 times. Two double-headers for the CCQFs could work, although you lose 6 sets of participating fans.

In terms of venue I don't think we can really do much better than the Etihad tbh. Even aside from the extra travelling involved, the fact was the Millennium and Murrayfield, both with a capacity ~70k, were simply far too big for this purpose. I understand the argument that it was originally designed as a tool for expansion and it's more of a weekend away if you have to travel far but it looked a bit of a joke on TV when there were always at least 40/50 thousand empty seats. Manchester is still a great city and worth stopping over even if you don't have to travel the length of the country to get there.

The RFL have played about with the venue, the fixtures and the weekend which it is held. For me they now have 2 out of 3 of these spot on. They need to give it time to grow properly. Either look at ways to make the fixtures more "worthwhile" or just leave it as it is and attendances should increase year on year.

This could work for either the Challenge Cup and/or the early play off games.