And their opponents on that wednesday night in '54 were a very good team called Halifax currently sitting on top of the Championship. What do they now get 1k?. Now that is really going backwards.

The reasons why it was a one off are manyfold and not difficult to find out about:

1) The relaunch of RL in London
2) Birth of the Quins - in that first season there were many more "curious" RU fans.
3) First game played back at The Stoop for several years - a ground with fond memories for London RL fans.
4) Far more media attention in build up to the game.

If you are going to criticise the club for falling from 8,000 to 4,000 v St. Helens - you might as well criticise them for falling from "allegidly" 10,000 v Huddersfield in the same season it was a ONE OFF - double header.

We have so much positive news, such as the feature on Sky last week on kids playing rugby in London, the development of the amateur game but we don't seem to be able to convert them to loyal supporters?

There is a story in the RL media this week of a new Quins supporter who has recently made it a prerequisite of him accepting a new job that he be given time off to travel to see Quins play. He was classed as a 'new convert'. So you just don't know who is joining you. It may simply be that they are joining in a trickle rather than a tsunami but so long as they are joining then surely things aren't going backwards?

Think you will find quite a few of the kids who play in London do turn up, in fact a couple of the lads who play for elmbridge are the ball boys

problem is, when one of the west london teams are playing Medway!! getting back over to the stoop to watch the quins play becomes a bit difficult
All the open age games are played on Sat afternoon, so you aint going to get any of them!
Look at the press release for the LJL finals and the amount of kids playing and amount of dads mums etc watching!! When was it? SAT!!!!
Back to the age old question of when we play Sat or Sunday!

The 8000 crowd was a bit of a one off, first game of that season i believe and first game back at the stoop
The problem we have at the moment is that little thing called the recession
If yr a saints fan, getting to Wigan, Warrington, Salford, not that hard
Leeds, bradford cas a bit longer,
But lets have a look at the 3 distance trips from saints!! LONDON!!! CELTIC, Catalan!! sorry but lets be honest there will be those that go to all the games!!, there will be those that go to all games on there side of the pennines and then pick and choose there games over the hills, and then look and see 3 travelling games and choose 1 or 2
!!!!!!! Celtic new kids on block so thats gonna be a fairly strong pull this year
Cats!! well they got the beach!
Magic weekend or london

In other words we need to build our home support not rely on away fans

2000 - 3,013 and 4322
2001 - 3754
2002 - 4113 and 5540
2003 - 4214
2004 - 4757
2005 - 5,261
2006 - 8213
2007 4362
2008 - 6,000 and 3629
2009 - 4259

So the average against St Helens is 4,725. The bigger gates at the stoop of 6,000 and 8,213 were down to promotion/kids tickets, curious Union fans. The second gate in 2002 IIRC was down to a promotion in TNT, so you could argue that from 2000 to 2005 we grew our gates against Saints.

As for going backwards? It's a tough one to call. I think we have a squad with home grown players in it, a ground that is up to scratch and still have the hard core fans we had at Griffin Park. Yes, some people have stopped coming, for various reasons such as the Union connection or the fact that the club lack in Customer Services/relationship management, but I would think the nucleus of the home fans is pretty much the same.
I agree, away fans are not to be relied upon and we need to attract (IMO) another 1,500 regulars and pretty sharpish.
I have given up trying to argue the financial implications of this, so will just say that a new fan coming to the Stoop is not going to be impressed with a crowd of 3,250.......but 5,000 would make a better impression.

Lastly, on the issue of away fans I have totally changed my tune and now think that the West Stand should be for Quins Fans and the East for Away supporters. If you listen to the crowd on Superleague TV's highlights all you can hear is the Saints fans being amplified by that lower tin roof.

For the pedantic amongst us and if you are going purely on fans, we are down 11% on our last season as the Broncos and a whopping 18% on our first year back at the stoop (I have adjusted the 12,000 double header to 2,700 which is the Hudds average BTW) so it's a bit of two steps forwards 1 step back at the moment

Much as though I prefer Saturday games, it strikes me that one of the easiest ways we could get a few more punters in is NOT to be playing on the same day as our local amateur clubs! Surely the people who play/ watch/volunteer at these clubs are some of the most likely punters to target? Course if our game clashes with the one they or their kids are playing in well they're not gonna come to the Stoop are they! It is even worse for us because of how spread out across the South these clubs are and how difficult it can be to get around London /M25. Although thankfully a traffic jam on Saturday meant I missed a fair bit of Saturday's first half mauling by Saints! If you live in the heartlands it could well be possible to play / watch your local amateur club and then go on to watch your SL side later the same day. Different story if ,as was posted , you have to get back to the Stoop from somewhere like Medway. I know we gave out season tickets out to amateur players before but if they are playing when we are they aren't going to be present to make the Stoop look a bit more populated! Is it that difficult to sort this or am I missing something here?

duh!

So Craig, would you rather that the whole ground was open with each stand having a tiny sprinkling of people, and the additional doubling of stewarding costs?

As things go, I would close the North, stick the away fans in the East and home fans in the West. The marketing this year, regardless of when it started has delivered 1 crowd (hudds) that was above average because their were 1,000 odd kids/parent etc for the community day. I fear that if we get less than 4,000 for Bradford then the BIG 4 campaign will not have been a success.........
The Big 4 have so far given us:
Leeds...4,378 against a 10yr average of 4,618 DOWN
Giants...3,916 against a 10yr avergae of 2,800 UP
Saints...4,259 against a 10yr average of 4,764 DOWN

Whilst I applaud the community day for Hudds, the following game shows that it didn't encourage people back.

Stewarding costs are linked to the number of people as I understand the legislation. I believe you need 1 steward per 250 people so not clear that each stand you open doubles the costs