22 thousand turned up for RL in Cronulla and Penrith, what was the Reds crowd?

Send them over here and the NRL can have Salford

actually there was about 400 cheering on the SG ball side this morning. are you sharing the same frustration as me that we can draw close to 16,000 to games in perth but don't have a team whilst these suburbs of Sydney have teams that people don't want to watch?

Heard your SG Ball side has a couple of good players JB.

I worked at our Matts and Ball in Cronulla on Sat morning before shooting off to Henson Park to work in arvo. Cronulla had a couple of hundred also, mainly parents and family TBH but with a few real fans who go to watch their juniors.

ahh its so good having the nrl back.

being in sydney in rl season is so special

I want the Reds back, but I don't want any Sydney side moving or dieing just to bring them back.

We have Sydney covered and imo, that;s a damn good thing.

Getting every Sydney NRL club up to 10,000 members should be what the NRL should be trying very hard to do.

Sydney's teams are an asset to RL, not a hindrance.

yeh I was quite impressed with a couple of the lads yesterday. The Bulldogs side was massive compared to us (what the heck do you feed your kids in Sydney?) and that was the biggest difference. Our fullback looked good and our number 10 was outstanding considering the size he was giving away to the Doggies props. Very good footwork and plenty of work, will make a very good 2nd row if he keeps growing. We had a couple of 16 year olds playing who went ok as well.

Whilst on crowds, a very disasppointing turn out on the Gold Coast. I'd have thought they would get close to a full house in their opening game of the season. Yes, it's the lowly New Zealand Warriors, but if it's your team at home and you're around the corner, you go rain, hail or shine. Is this is for the part time fans up on the Gold Coast? You will get your 10k+ hardcore Titans fans, but will they get those part time fans through the gates regulary enough? You would like to think so, but then again, the track record on the Gold Coast isn't great in the long term.

I think the Titans are the most expensive team in the country to watch week to week.

Just look at their membership prices, double everybody else.

An excellent point. I am glad I ain't the only noticing.

So how do the attendances compare to last season?

One you notice watching the games is the speed - it makes SL look positively pedestrian

broncos V cowboys 48516
bulldogs V knights 18110 - not bad considering few away fans
parra V Dragons 18293 - disappointing and cant understand it, trumpeted as a sell out by media. perhaps moving to ANZ would have got more as parking access etc....
panthers v Canberra 11133 - out of town team, so over 11K not a bad effort
rabbitohs V roosters 23149 - didnt see so cant judge on how many roosters fans, should be 30K given the rivallry.
sharks v storm 11820 - again out of town team so over 11K a decent effort
titans V warriors 16112- similar every time they play on a sunday, they prefer evening games on the GC

quality games, the friday night games in particular were brilliant

Wow, the crowd figure for the Titans vs Warriors game is a little surprising - it didn't look like 16k. If the figure is accurate, it's not as bad as I thought.

yeh I thought there seemed alot of empty seats. Guess the honeymoon is over and people are baulking at the ticket prices?

Despite the feel good and positive hype leading into the season it hasn't translated to bums on seats in the opening round which is a shame.

Yeah, very disappointing. For a crowd base allegedly screaming out for 'their own team', this doesn't reflect well when we are talking about the opening game of the season. There looked to be plenty of empty seats at Skilled Park.