This is nonsense. As much criticism as these get these are tickets that we wouldn't have sold otherwise. Without Club Wembley this crowd would have been nearer 70,000.

......................... and the match would have been played at the Milennium Stadium.

Whoooosh!
We're not talking about the seats that were taken. Some of the empty seats seen on television were in the Club Wembley section. Simple as.

You have seriously got to be kidding. I'm no fan of the Wire, but they must have had well over 30k fans there and the noise they made was phenomenal. I've been to a lot of CC finals going back to the 1970s and the Warrington support equalled or bettered anything that (say) Saints, Bradford or Leeds ever mustered.

The crowd was higher than any CC final away from Wembley, higher than quite a few of those in the 1990s (eg Saints/Bradford in 1996, Sheffield/Wigan in 1998, Wigan/Saints in 1991 plus others.)

62,000 for Saints Wigan at Murrayfield was much more embarrasing.

It didn't look amazing on TV because the gaps were in noticeable areas but it wasn't a bad crowd by any stretch of the imagination.

There are always going to be gaps in noticeable areas, because of club wembley. And if the people round me are anything to go by (including my kids I should say), at any given point during the match there's about 10 000 people nipped off to the loo or queuing downstairs for food & drink

rl12 August 2009rl
:1gissbia]

Going by those statements, Huddersfield seem to have been expecting support in the region of 17,000. Did this materialise? "“When we played in the 2006 Challenge Cup final against St Helens at Twickenham we took 13,000 fans.

“And there’s no reason at all why we won’t far exceed that figure this time around.”'"

I taped the match and have just finished the count - 16,767 Huddersfield fans.

By the way, can anyone tell me who won the match?

Only in rugby league could you have 7 pages (and counting) of hair-rending and gnashing of teeth bemoaning an attendance of 75K+

Thing is rugby union would have filled it so would have football so were does this leave the so called great era of super league?


Kill the roots kill the tree

Looks like a sport dieing on its feet

4 nations should be interesting

No they wouldn't. They couldn't even fill Old Trafford for an International with Argentina. Wembley is impossible to sell out for anything other than Football and NFL due to all this Club Wembley rubbish.

Then again, with a username like that, you're clearly deluded.

why my child?

Face facts the game is dieing

Grand final...hope it huddersfield v catalans

For a ground that holds 90,000, and with the last two games having 85k and 84k there, then yes it's poor in comparison. The drop in attendance was not due to Club Wembley, it was to do with the huge gaps of empty seats in the upper tier, and some in the lower, so don't try and make it out like it was a CW issue.


If you did notice the crowd, why did you question it? And why did you choose to talk about a non-crowd matter on a thread about the crowd? It's like you think it makes you superior to those who want to talk about the crowd. Like I say, it's not rocket science to notice huge gaps in the ground (especially when you're there!) and then watch the game.

There are many factors as to why the crowd may have been lower than previous years that had nothing to do with Warrington or Hudderfield.

I presume you have been lucky enough to remain untouched by the current recession? Many people are out of work and a trip to Wembley (even after a 19 year drought!) costs more than Job Seekers Allowance allows!

Like it or not, many Wigan and Saints fans did buy tickets and then chose not to go because they were not involved - a trip to ebay or Huddersfield and Warrington boards will prove that! Whether it was out of spite because their team wasn't involved or whether it was again financial ( it does cost a lot to get to Wembley), people can't buy tickets that are already sold.

I'm sure people that stayed away had their own reason for it. I know of holidays and weddings that got in the way - afterall, we never expected to get to the final! But I am also sure that the people that went had a brilliant time - so what does it matter?

I think one of the reasons the crowd was so much lower than the previous two was to do with the 3 week turn around from the semis. 9 week gap to the semis to sell less than 25k seats, then 3 weeks to sell 70k? Not the best planning from those in charge.

Should be at least a 5 week gap between the semis and the final.