Most semi finals now have poor attendances since the move to summer rugby and the height of the holiday season.

The Challenge Cup should be played in the early part of the season with the final no later than the beginning of June.

That way we would have a final in each half of the season and not on top of each other like they are now.

No rocket science needed to improve the competition, just common sense.

I agree to an extent on the final date but they would have to ensure the first round wasn't pre season as it was before the move to August.

It's amazing and sad how things have changed.

I used to love the way the Lancashire Cup kicked off the season. It never felt like a meaningless tournament to me, or to many others - 25,000 at the last ever final between Wigan and Saints!

If only we could readjust everyone's thinking, and turn the CC into something along those lines. Perhaps mingle a few league fixtures in there, so people don't feel the real action hasn't started yet, and make the final the half-way point of the season (get it back to the merry month of May), so the second half is all about the league.

Then we'd also do away with this overkill of important games at the business end when there's a dearth of such earlier on.

I think this is a very good idea.

The CC used to be THE pinnacle of the RL season. The emphasis is now on the playoffs (not the league; the league is almost redundant).

Playing the CC early on will also nudge teams into taking a "season long" approach to the game in terms of "peaking", and just may improve it's profile.

Attendance for the 1998 semi against London - in Huddersfield - 11,058. That season our average crowds were much lower than now. Not sure what conclusions to reach.

I was thinking the other day, would it be good to have a few localised cup competitions rather than the random extra games when we go down to 12 teams. I only started watching in 2001 so I don't know how it was pre-Murdoch, but we could have:
International Cup - Les Catalans, London, Sheffield, Toulouse, Whitehaven and Workington
Lancashire Cup - Leigh, Salford, St Helens, Widnes, Wigan and Warrington
Yorkshire Elite Cup - Bradford, Huddersfield, Hull FC, Hull KR, Leeds and Wakefield
Central Yorkshire Cup - Batley, Castleford, Dewsbury, Doncaster, Featherstone and Halifax

Play each other once at the start of the year (alternate who's home and who's away, with the remaining round played at Magic instead of a league round. Home games count on your season ticket so you still get 13 home games), top 2 play in a final. Of course the international cup could be a bit of a flop, but there's plenty merit in the other three. Then again having Les Catalans and Toulouse compete in a final most years could be good for French RL, the other 4 at least get a chance to test themselves against two SL clubs (assuming Toulouse come in and London leave before then)

unless they havespent the last couple of weeks on mars, i think most rugby league fans already know its on?

its not lack of marketing, its overpricing combined with apathy

There is a definite malaise in the game at present.

Initially, I feel it comes from the top - their inability to market the game, to generate extra income from TV, to preserve our best players, to reward our go-ahead clubs rather than peg them back with the losers etc, not to mention their failure to spread the word to other regions.

But there other factors too. I used to favour the franchise idea and be opposed to P&R - I was worried that clubs being relegated would struggle desperately to come back up given the financial differential between SL and the Championship, and that we'd finish up with a SL in name only. But now, probably because the RFL have allowed people to keep on getting around the franchise system, thus fatally undermining it, and because so many clubs and fans feel there is nothing to play for from midway through the season, we have still become a SL in name only. I think we now have no choice but to bring back P&R. At the end of the day, there will always be haves and have-nots in any sport. The only way to remove the perennial underachievers from the highest tier is to be absolutely ruthless with them, and the RFL clearly aren't prepared to do that, so I'd rather have a few yoyo clubs than see half the season rendered meaningless.

For the same reason, I now totally agree that the extended play-off format is a disaster. I didn't like it anyway by instinct, but given how so many clubs, including Wigan, are clearly pacing themselves in the league, and how astonishingly boring that is for the fans, I think it's now essential that we cut the play-offs right down. With P&R back, teams would still have to work hard all year - to avoid the drop if not to win a pot.

There would be significantly more on if we had a voucher scheme!

I haven't seen a single TV advert on the BBC regarding the CC

You've missed the last train. The last one left Leigh in 1969.