Up and down? Ooh dear the irony....

Right. Power failure. Not a stadium issue - the streetlights were out in the area too. The ticket office had no power, the turnstiles are electric and therefore weren't working and without lighting inside it would not have been safe to let people in to the Riverside. Hence people were directed over to the Kilner Bank, the side where the cameras are. That stand holds about 8000 and a finger in the air guesstimate suggests about 6500 were in there. Communication was difficult, the the PA was out as well after all, but they got it done in the end.

With a potential game on Thursday, neither side wanted to come back on Sunday and self-inflict a short turnaround. Add in the additional complication of the Dragons having a flight home tonight and they kind of had to play it. The teams agreed to play, Sky said they were OK to broadcast it, so off we went.

Good game. Really, really tough stuff. I thought Ian Henderson was magnificent, but both teams left it all out on the field. Chapeaus all round.

Both teams left it all on the field? Were you watching the same game as everyone else -giants didn't get it out let alone leave it on the field!

Almost as many home supporters tonight as what wigan Leeds wire and saints got last week and more than the entire crowd at Castleford on Thursday.. Go and slag their crowds .. No you can't do that xan yoy because its the done thing to bag our crowds and nobody else.. Just not trendy enough is it?
It was a joke kicking off with 5000 people still outside expecting a delayed kick off and no we didn't turn up again!

5000 outside? Brilliant.

yet we got as many home supporters as saints got to see them lift some silverware after so many years.
we got more home supporters than castleford and warrington got, almost as many home supporters as what leeds got and probably only 1000 less than what wigan got!

out of all the clubs who have had home games in the play offs, we are the only team to post an attendance higher than our season average.

yet we still get called for our lack of support!

absolute madness

total chaos lastnight, 10mins till kick off and the crowd all locked outside

no one really knew what was going on, which was poor from the stewards.

picked up our tickets from the ticket office and the staff were in darkness having to use mobile phones for torches!

think the crowd was 4250 which was above what i expected.

as for the so called catalan fans, they were a bunch of lads tanked up on alcohol from bradford, they didnt come over from France, and were trying to cause trouble all night, one got thrown out after trying to get on the pitch

they were mates of elliot whitehead and were an embarrassment.
after the game they were battling with the stewards to try and get into the players lounge and generally being obnoxious and abusive to everyone.
i hope a few of them got some slaps for their efforts!

the real catalan fans were a pleasure as always and very gracious in victory unlike these bells.

makes sense now with the whitehead link.

Yorkshire top club?????

I like that one

You must work in a circus as a clown

Someone told me those 'Catalan fans' were Odsal Sedbergh/West Bowling players who were mates with Whitehead or something, not sure if that is correct...either way they were acting like complete idiots and were a bunch of dicks all night !

We collected our tickets from the office and i asked the woman what the situation was, she said kick-off's been delayed and they didnt know how long for, the queue was right back to the swimming pool entrance and the game had already kicked off when we got in so it obviously wasnt delayedeven though most of the crowd were still in a queue somewhere outside the ground !

daz,when we joined the queue by the swimming pool corner it was 7.50,and not moving very quickly, everyone had heard that the game had been delayed, most people thought to 8.30 so no obvious rush etc
we nipped into the rope walk to use the toilet and there were still plenty of people inside and outside the pub, as we were coming out we saw the teams coming out for kick off!
this obviously caused panic and hundreds of people dashed out to join the queue's which by now was a free for all outside the turnstiles, the stewards were desperately trying to keep people in order but there was thousands still trying to get in after the game had kicked off, despite people thinking it was delayed.
lots of angry people shouting and swearing at stewards even though none of it was their fault- most of them were taken by surprise by the 8.00 kick off as were the fans.
eventually we got in just before catalan scored their first try,unaware that we had scored first!

it was chaos, completely unorganised, i realise that the club did as much as they could, but there were no announcements regarding kick off, most people had wrongly assumed it was delayed, not sure where that initially came from, but we heard at about 7.15 that the game had been delayed, i suspect many others thought the same as hundreds of people were still waiting to collect tickets when the game kicked off not to mention thousands outside!
someone said that the club wanted to delay kick off because of the congestion outside but sky wouldn't agree to it as it would interrupt their schedule so the game kicked off on time regardless of the situation with the fans outside.

I thought they got people through the turnstiles pretty quickly. The fault was with folk (like myself) in the pub assuming the game was delayed afyer seeing completely empty terraces on the tv so thinking no one was bring allowed in yet!

was the game announced as delayed at anytime jools? i got told by 4/5 different people it was.

I also got told the same thing-but wrong rumours spread as quickly as right ones!