The game in London needs help from the RFL, i'd hold the Magic weekend there for the next ten years. Wembley, Emirates, Twickenham, Stamford Bridge, wherever but there needs to be a concerted long term effort to make the London franchise a viable entity.

Olympic Stadium? Dunno when its due to open but could be a chance to get to use it for the Magic Weekend before the main event there in 2012, could be like a dry run for the organisers with a crowd of approx 30-35,000 each day to handle. Thoughts anyone?

The Challenge Cup has been played at Wembley for nearly a century and there's been a Super League club within the city for over a decade.

There's your ''long term effort to make a London franchise a viable entity''.

It's primarily an athletics stadium, not a football stadium. There are better venues in London, like those Dan155 mentioned. The main snag would be finding a date when nobody objected to having seven games played on their pitch, so I suppose in that respect the Olympic Stadium could be more feasible.

As Magic weekend began (or at least I got this impression) as a tool to promote rugby league in South Wales and pave the way for a Superleague club in the region it would make more sense to me to stage it in London than in Edinburgh, Dublin, or anywhere else where there isn't even any semi-pro RL.

re the MM surely it boils down to which city wants to pay the RFL to host it rather than the supporters wishing it was A B or C?

London will not exactly be awash with cash after 2012

Play it in North Wales , it would pave the way for a future SL club there

Well yes, some of us are probably being a bit naive here. It just seems a bit pointless to me having an annual beano in Edinburgh (great city to visit regardless of Magic weekend) when there's no more matches for any locals to watch for another year. A bit like Wembley Stadium selling out for a match between two top American gridiron teams even though (to the best of my knowledge) the game isn't even played semi-professionally in this country and no one watches it live for the rest of the year.

If Magic Weekend is going to help spread the word and encourage genuine expansion it has to happen in a place where there will be further high level matches for potential converts to watch throughout the season and to get hooked on regular live games. Otherwise I don't really see the point.

I thought that the original point of having the Magic weekends in Cardiff (ignoring any alleged financial benefits) was to try to replicate the great weekend atmosphere that resulted when the CCF was played there, and previously in Edinburgh, something that doesn't happen with Wembley where the small-ish no. of RL fans who choose to make a weekend of it are "lost" in London.

I doubt that it's now the point though because the Magic weekends are nowhere near as well attended as the Edinburgh and Cardiff CCFs were. The concept of having all the SL teams playing over two days was quite a bright and bold one, but I don't think it's worked, unfortunately.

There's probably less drawing power of MM without the derby matches, think the only way to give it a shot in the arm would be to move it elsewhere (Dublin, Paris) or what about have it as a season opener? Even without the derbies lots of fans want to go to the first game of the season - why not make a big weekend of it (would probably need to stage it in a stadium where the roof can be closed in case of bad weather - think both Cardiff MM'S were 'indoors', althought that was at Sky's request IIRC)

marketing is an embarassment . bad move going to the stoop in first place but their hands were tied

need to work on the younger element and do everything they can to sell IL's shares and get someone in the club who hs a bit of cash

two years trying to offload his shares says to me that the club is goign to struggle

really hoping that the attendance picks up but if I am honest its not looking good

you said it bud!

Quote wire-quin="wire-quin"Yawn-Stick to filling Auckland Warriors ground up. We've heard it all before. Maybe our speedway fan in Oxford and all the other Sunday is the only day to play due to.... will provide some explanation for the poor gate today. They cant even blame the sun in your eyes rubbish as there was none to be seen.'" viewtopic.php?f=27&t=403113&start=60

Quote wire-quin="wire-quin"Yawn-Stick to filling Auckland Warriors ground up. We've heard it all before. Maybe our speedway fan in Oxford and all the other Sunday is the only day to play due to.... will provide some explanation for the poor gate today. They cant even blame the sun in your eyes rubbish as there was none to be seen.'" viewtopic.php?f=27&t=403113&start=60