I think I know the answer to that, the club want to to reduce the amount of Sunday to Thursday / Friday turnarounds. I think their initial choice was to switch to Fridays, the compromise was to see how Saturdays worked.

If the switch from Sundays is to aide player welfare/fitness/recovery then it is an acceptable change, we may not like it but having the players in top condition has to come first.

Saturday's work well for me, in all honesty.

I might have a look to see what castlefords fixtures have been like for this season.


I've said on here a few weeks ago, the change in fixture to aid player recovery and turnaround times ain't done this year.

Wasn't Geordie a monkey hanger anyway?

It won't have a fundamental impact on the teams fortunes obviously, but could do on player welfare. Surely an extra day off from the Thursday fixtures are a good thing, as long as it doesn't impact on crowd numbers? There will obviously be individual preferences based on what days people can / can't make.

What will be difficult to quantify at this stage is how much of the drop in attendances for Sunday to Saturday games (I presume there has been a drop) is down to the switch, and how much is down to team performances.

There's no Thursday matches and only one Friday match for the Middle 8's so no reason why the club couldn't have played on Sunday. Short turnarounds or maximum recovery isn't really a reason in this instance, the club obviously just want to play on a Saturday for whatever reason.

I would suggest it's more a corporate marketing decision. Sell more packages on Friday and Saturday?

Suppose we'll find out when people are coming back from the event..

I asked the question someone asked regardimg the early bird season ticke sales in conjuction with RFL fixture announcement, they are looking into that. But going forward into next season we will be mostly friday night games.

The meeting was constructive and some good questions were asked, next meeting is pencilled in for september.

Give him is due Karl Fitzpatrick came across very well, i know a lot of people have had negative views about him(me included) but the guy is passionate that's for sure, let's give him a chance.

BTW it was not a slagging off meetimg.

Did they say anything about a roundup online of all of tonight's answers? I couldn't be there due to work commitments.

These things should've recorded and put on YouTube / club website. A weekly podcast would be good too...

Sorry i did not hear if that would happen, there were a lot of questions asked and to be fair they were all good questions which they answered and those that couldnt will be looked into, gave us a tour to start with to soften us up lol.

They were asked why it took till now to have this meeting and why no statement had been given, listening to their reasons why did make sense.

It was not all about on field performance although that was talked about obviously and what they trying to do going forward about it and recruiment. They said they always looking out for the good players over here not just NRL and that most clubs here fear us because we can basically buy anyone availble if its what we need.

Other things that came up were marketing and commercial, one that came up was the touchdown club thing that is on just now, someone said yes they like it but dont want to sit in east stand that they want to go were they normally are, they agreed with that and will look into trying to make it work.

Recruitment is done between TS and SM, they explained everyone else's jobs on the board.