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.

I read on earlier post about Fev bucking the trend, I read with interest also Halifax. So does that mean if a team plays good rugby in Champ 1 like Fev and Halifax they will maintain possibly grow their gates like these two clubs have.

The real issue for us was changing our matchday from Sunday to Friday nights as can been seen in the figures posted. In business when you are in financial trouble you never risk a solid revenue stream as our club did, neither Fax or Fev did that and look at their result!

I think having Fridays nights in again next season will deter many people from buying season tickets, remember we lost 350 st holders last season and its going to really hard to get them back. I read earlier what was the financial impact to loosing them, even a board member said the finaces weren't any different? What would have been the result if we had kept them?

Lets not kid ourselves the clubs priority has to be attracting new and bringing back supporters we have lost and that is not going to be easy.

At one of the first fans forums we were told that the budget just to break even we had to average 1800 supporters 2000 to pay a small amount of the debt back, if we had 2200 with good cup and play off runs we would make a massive hole if not pay the debt off.

Then why at the last fans forum do we learn the debt has increased from £60K to £90k and on top of that we are struggling to pay a £9k tax bill! (I hear this might of recently been paid)

I know we have a excellent set of die hard fans many like me on this site. If we want to see the kind of rugby and team PR has turned out this season and to grow and develop the club its not going to be anywhere like enough with just the support of our core fans.

End of last season we virtually died and hats off to a lot of people they dug deep and the (club) phoenix rose once again. That gives us a great foundation to build from we cant look back as that changes nothing its the future we all have to work on.

We have the makings of a great team managed and led by a coaching staff that has brought confidence, inspiration and excellent attitude, a winning attitude to the club. Our facilities are 1st class so for me our priorities have to be as follows:-

1. Bringing back once loyal fans to the club, use the stall on the market as the platform to work from, build a supporters data base to inform everybody about whats happening at the club, promote fixtures etc, get posters up around the town, shop windows and pubs etc, do leaflet drops asking for peoples details (do a draw for a shirt or signed ball or free tickets in exchange for peoples info) Ask business to put a link on their web sites that takes them to the club site. Anything that will attract and bring supporters old and new to the club.

3. Set a realistic and acheivable budget, for years we have been too over optimistic like last season with the attendances. Go back to basics, manage and do what we know works.

4. Work on sponsership ie keep hold of what we have with a plan to attract small, medium and large business to support us. This will take time but we have to start somewhere and I think this is what Richie Blackmore is doing so it will be interesting to hear how that is coming along as in KF statement from the last fans forum.

More fans + sponsership = more money to maintain, build and develop our excellent club!

I think as much as moving games to Friday, it's been the inconsistency with what day we play that is the problem. With Thursday, Friday and Sunday all featuring it's difficult for a lot of people to be available for all the games, and difficult for the occasional fan to even know when we're playing.

We've also not done community work, kids are the future!

Ryan would make an excellent representative for a community dept .

We are getting a new community department. The last one failed miserably to do what it was supposed to do and was driven more on trying to win awards rather than engage with the community in the interests of Leigh centurions.

We never did any 'real' community work, we went to the same schools with the same offers that took money out of the club because they ended up with folk who would have been paying full price anyway.

We need to excite the kids to want to come, that means a big name player they can associate with and a kid free with adult deal that is on all season, with the JC's as the glue holding things together

So our new plan to employ 18 year olds do it and link with wigan will work, why would Wigan help us compete for fans they could have! Don't make me laugh, conflict of interest !

You've just suggested using young Ryan????

We need to have players employed by the community dept we get an allowance off the salary cap for this .
Ryann Brierley would do an excellent job IMHO parky pig too working in the community .
They didn't even apply for community club of the year , they didn't know anything of it till it was awarded. In fact it was the community dept contribution to our SL bid that won them the award.

Ryan is 20 btw

He's not an academy player

Who cares about awards! We want a community dept to help increase crowds not to go after awards. That's where the last one went wrong.