The Original Red Devils. Sorry i strongly disagree. Why do you think we played Catalans on a sunday afternoon last season? It was because, if the fixture was played on the friday night, the attendance would of been well short of the 10147. Maybe around the 8000 mark.Thats the reason why the sunday afternoon was chosen by the club.

I also disagree with your comment regarding Salford supporters will attend no matter what day we play. Thats not true. I know supporters who pick and choose the games they attend due to the friday night fixture, obviously work and social happenings decide this.

However a winning team would do wonders for bums on seats i agree, but come on lets be realistic here, hope your not banking on a top eight finish.

We played on Sundays for years at The Willows and got poor crowds. We moved to Friday nights and still got poor crowds. If we are going after the family audience at the new stadium though it does seem strange to play on Friday nights.

IIRC and i may be wrong didn't we change from Sundays in 2005?

Our average attendance are below;
Sunday games

2000 - 4,452
2001 - 4,214
2002 - 4,199
2003 ?
2004 - 3,996

Friday averages;

2005 - 4,093
2006 - 4,820
2007 - 5,185
2009 - 4,467

That actually says to me more Friday games have actually seen a slight improvement in numbers compared to the Sunday games. Like i said i didn't think there would be much difference and i fail to see how playing on a Sunday would increase attendance. Plus on a Sunday you wouldn't have as much corporate income and would have to compete with United.

It works both ways for every person that cant attend on a Friday their will be someone who wont attend on the Sunday. So surley you can see why the club choose Fridays?

What was last years average?

Because the club would loose out on the corporate income if they played Sunday and to be honest it probably wont get that many more people few the gates as I've just posted so they would be loosing out on money.

4,754 bear in mind we had 10,000 last game. Either way i can see the ups and downs our crowds ar just poor. We need to hope we can get a winning team to change that although looking at next years squad it won't happen.

So the fact is after possibility the most disrupting season in living memory we gained round 300 and odd people I would see that as a big success

Another reason why clubs are moving towards prioritising corporate sales is because it's controllable income. The club has a longer window for selling games. Plus they are not at the mercy of weather conditions, game conditions and other external factors that can cause fluctuations in walk-up takings and travelling support.

Always liked the Friday night option best, in the height of summer it's a cooler option, there are other things to be doing on a Sunday afternoon but very little on a Friday night and gives the weekened a nice start when there's a game to look forward too on a Friday.

Although it does get too late for very young children on a Friday; the advantage from a family point of view is that it does leaves Sunday free for some quality time - you can go out for the day or whatever, which isn't an option on a Friday night. Also if I'm not taking the kids I can go to a game when they are in bed and still have the weekend free to spend time with them. So for me, Friday night is more family friendly.

Are you sure the club don't pay you to try and put a super-positive spin on absolutely everything?!

Ok, now get a mean average score of attendances at previous home games versus Catalans. Replace the massively over-inflated figure for the final game with the mean average score. Then calcualte a new average attendance for the 2011 season and compare with the official average. THEN take into account that many opposing teams supporters will have attended an away day at the Willows just because it was their respective team's last visit. THEN take into a account the unprescedented distribution of free tickets last year.

Then enter the actual figure into SPPS, press some buttons and conduct a 14 way ANOVA to see if our attendances are statistically significant across Super League... Erm, you could probably drop the last bit. ; )

Or we can just state what really happened....rather than put a negative spin on everything...we gained 300ish....now if we get our house in order both on and off the field who knows what will happen.

Bobby even I understand that it's not as simple as that!

An over inflated last gate, Some away teams bringing bigger numbers due to their elevated position in the league standings.

I stand to be corrected, but I'd put my house on the avg gate for last year being less than usual had it not been for the last game.

By my quick calculations, minus the last game of the season we averaged 4,305 (rounded up).