by my estimates we will be playing France in the QF - which *should* be more a more than easy route of getting to the semi's.

Even by some chance we do manage to finish 3rd in the group, we will be playing Samoa in the QF, which despite their exciting performance the other night should be seen as very winnable.

Game 1 & 2 Eng v Aus / Wales v Italy : 45052 (74500)
Game 3 PNG v France : 7500 (10150)
Game 4 NZ v Samoa : 14965 (15200)
Game 5 Fiji v Ireland : 8872 (10,249)
Game 6 Scotland v Tonga : 7,630 (10000)
Game 7 USA v Cook Islands :7,247 (12,100)

Total so far : 91,266 (132,199)
Percentage of seats taken up : 69.03%
Average per game : 13038

Not looking too shabby, certainly ahead of my expectations in this moment in time.

On course for it to be the most well attended International Rugby League Tournament ever.

looking ahead to the next few matches we have the next 3 games likely to all have 5 figure gates with saints the only slight doubt of the three. then wales in wrexham which is selling well followed by another derwent park game for scotland, which i would imagine will be a good crowd after the tonga game the other evening. onto next week and a second game at hull kr and its a real appetiser with png up against the entertainers of samoa, this should get a bigger crowd than the france game. leigh has been selling really well, and the only unknown is the game at salford stadium which for some reason seems to struggle with attendances generally.

Sage like advice

Can't do it without taking top flight games there.

The challenge of this World Cup was to reunite the sport and draw in a new audience
The changes to the structures motivated me to purchase over 100 tickets for this event that I wouldn't have done if we were keeping the franchise farce as I had become disenfranchised from the greater sport in recent years

Its excellent to see stadia outside the "traditional" heartland with full terraces, no empty seats. The problem with the 2000 world cup was the, 1000 attendance in Belfast for a first day match etc. It doesn't get the game off to a good start.

This time round, people have bought into the tournement much better, I wonder what that is down to?

More money available to promote?
Better team put together to promote?
More press coverage?

A few small changes make a big difference. You rightly point out the farce of opening the tournament with a ridiculous fixture - we avoided that this time and made sure that the first day (alongside the final, the day most likely to have journalists paying attention) was a big one. A few have tried to disparage us, but we haven't given the anti-League press any open goals. The new structure, designed to avoid blow-out scores has also worked pretty much perfectly so far. Plus, England showed up against the Aussies. Some good decisions and no doubt some good luck have seen the stars align themselves pretty well so far. Disaster avoided, it's now just a question of how good the thing can be - mainly it now comes down to how far England go. The one area where I can't help but think we'll let ourselves down, is, paradoxically, following an unlikely - but possible - England win. Massive opportunity for the best PR in a generation or more, but I doubt very much we have a great plan in place ready to exploit it to anything like the maximum potential. Hopefully it'll be made easier by starting with a last minute 100-metre try by a Tomkins or such like to win the final, then a visit to Downing street, etc. Look what happened when a union carthorse managed to scrape a mis-kicked drop goal over the bar.

I don't know how much Olympic fever has continued on in England, but International sport got much better crowds for years after the Olympics in Australia. People would buy tickets to a hopscotch tournament if it was international.

Without being on the inside of how both tournaments have been promoted and run, it's difficult to say. From the outside looking in you can see clear differences which someone just mentioned above.

I mean 7k, on a cold wet wednesday night........in bristol.........for cook islands v usa? Someone somewhere is doing something very right.

I think the price of tickets has done a lot to help, if the tickets had been twice the price we prob won't have sold half as many, if I had read a small sign mentioning the rlwc but I had never heard of it before it would have perked my interest maybe worth a google and if there was a game near my house why wouldn't I go only a tenner for a cheap ticket.