With the our Average gate down by circa 600 I thought I'd have a look for the reason as I was bored on a flight today.
First up though let me say that I've never been a fan of using published gates as a reasoning , when seeing it is such a big thing in the Franchise process it often puzzles me as I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been in Wales or France and seen published gates that are 2 or 3 times the amount of people actually there just as those at Fethestone last night could argue sometimes it goes the other way as well !
However I'll crack on, this isn't scientific and it could be wrong as I haven't spent hours researching it (might have even missed a club fixture out and the maths was done on a bit of paper) but might give a rough idea on where we need to improve.

First figure is last years gate followed by this then the club we played and whether it was plus or minus from 2011's gates.

2011 Gate - 2012 Gate
2,583 Fri / 2,135 Fri :Barrow / Swinton - 448
2,285 Sun / 1,663 Thu : Batley - 622
1,942 Sun / 1,536 Fri : Dewsbury - 406
1,940 Thu / 1837 Fri : Featherstone -103
2525 Thu / 2122 Fri : Halifax - 403
2071 Sun / 1716 Sun : Hunslet - 355
2,633 Sun / 1,645 Thu : Sheffield - 988
3,183 Sun / 1,597 Thu : Widnes / Keighley - 1,586
2,207 Sun / 1,700 Fri : York - 507
2,407 Sat / Not Played : Toulouse - 2,407

Now my figures might be out (got from RFL fans and Sporting Life) but I think it does show a picture of what went wrong.

The controversial Friday v Sunday fixtures saw only 2 fixtures to compare (Dewsbury and York) overall gate of 4,149 for Sunday matches dropped to 3,236 For the Friday games (so we lost 913 fans on those two like for like fixtures), we also saw the 'unpopular'
Thur TV games score bigger gates than Friday night fixtures (Halifax and Featherstone ) 4,465 Thursday dropped to 3,959 For Friday fixtures (So we lost 506 Fans).
In total Friday fixtures lost us 1,419 Fans this season if using those gates mentioned.

On like for like Sunday fixtures we didn't do much better as we lost 355 fans for the visit of Hunslet.
The loss of Widnes was massive and also the loss of Barrow was a big factor as well (lost 1,586 fans for Widnes and 448 for Barrow as these got replaced with Swinton and Keighley - lets not forget though Keighley was another midweek fixture due to prob's fitting it in).
The loss of the Saturday fixture v Toulouse (-2,406 ,why are we not looking at 6pm Saturday ?) was one I'm not sure we got back.
TV fixtures I hope are compensated for as 988 fans not turning up (Sheffield) is a fair old loss.

Looking at the above I think its Swintons turn to play on Fridays next season (the official reason lets not forget was all about the pitch and Swinton getting the choice in before us) as Fridays haven't been a great success if using gates as a pointer.
However losing Widnes and (to a lessor degree Barrow) cost us some local interest games and shunting our big fixtures v Fev and Halifax to Friday didn't seem to work (bizarrely Thursdays was better the year previous).

I suppose its difficult for the club to decide what to do but I'd certainly ensure the big Yorkshire games (if not on TV) v Fev and Halifax are on a Saturday/Sunday to maximise away support and I'd also include all the Cumbrian clubs in that (especially Barrow who brought a great following in the NRC Sunday game), keep Swinton as the 'Derby' bank holiday fixture as one of the Easter fixtures if able and if we are going to put the odd game on a Friday to 'give the players a weekend off' then maybe use Hunslet and Dewsbury as the two fixtures to do that on.

All in all its not great reading (especially as we had slowly built up support over the last 3 seasons) but I'm sure the club said it wanted 2,100 as a average which (even accounting for the drop) we won't have been a million miles off and if you factor in the unexpected CC run I think we are still on a good footing.

Its important though the club continues with its off field efforts and maybe we somehow need to 'brand' the league in the towns of Leigh , Atherton etc as a league Leigh really want to be in and win - you are somehow missing out if your not there, use the beLeighve motto but lets keep the focus on getting back as being the best Championship club on & off the field with perhaps more focus on our players and our league and our cup competiton and concentrate on that as well.

Trevor said we would be playing a least three on Fridays next season as it's what the coach and players want, but not as many as this season

So basically, attendances are down no matter what day we play.

That's. What trevoR said too, let's make sure next season when we play Fax, Fev and Barrow at home it's Sunday they're the ones in our league who ll bring a good following over !

They're likely to be thursday games for tv so tuff luck really.

As for attendances being down...did no one absorb the wingeing and moaning thats gone on on here for the last 12 months about the hike in season ticket prices?

Apart from the Sheffield game which sticks out as an obvious loss from day switching, the rest pretty much avearge each other out and based on one season whose to say the numbers wouldnt have dropped by that much anyway? Also what isnt taken into account here which i think you would have to be involved at the club to find out, is the difference in financial turnover for the games with the lower gates. Which im sure everyone agrees is what the club is more interested in at the moment.

If they have made a gain with corporate deals etc for friiday games then i cant see the friday games going away.

I honestly think one of the issues is to get people more interested reguarly. if for arguments sake the average crowd is 1800, then look at the Leeds game where their was around 6000 on. Take off say 2000 leeds fans then 4000 people turned out for this game. which if people in the town were interested more often surely that would bump gates closer to the 2500 mark.

There couldn't have been 4000 Leigh fans on. Everyone knows Leigh fans won't watch rugby on a Friday night.

Yeah - but be fair - if they'd played the match on Sunday afternoon, it would have been a lock-out!!

The people I've asked why they don't come anymore say why pay good money to watch poor opposition who bring no fans they say games are boring
and are onesided affairs play decent teams like Leeds and fans will turn up as proved in the C Cup this season

Because it wasn't the least bit one-sided against Leeds

Agree Matt. Leigh do not play boring rugby these days.

Here I go again but sadly I think it is because of licenscing' fans now consider all Championship matches to be friendlies. I say all but i should have said except diehard fans.

A major factor in my opinion too, yet we really do need to look at why Featherstone gates have increased by 38% (except in 'shared gate' games, that is ) and Halifax's have gone up too.

Maybe just ask them do they want RL club in Leigh. Unfortunately that is the reality.

Did anyone notice the big blue mini bus at post office road , the one their community dept use!
Is it not a coincidence our attendances Down in the first year we've had no community dept!

I believe we (as a club) should seriously contemplate why Featherstone have bucked what we think is a downward trend, by increasing their attendances dramatically.