Quote: WARRIORCRAIG "Whatever reasons people give, the first home game of the season against top 4 contenders should have been pushing 15k even with minimal away support. They've brought less than they did on Friday with a bigger overall attendance. That was our lowest crowd against Huddersfield since 2009. The game against Brisbane should be viewed as a "MUST SEE" game IMO, on a par with the other big games that the part-timers come out the woodwork for; but if it wasn't for the Groupon offer which seems to have swelled the attendance at the last minute, there would have been 10,000 empty seats.
Tbh there are too many fans who seem to be looking for excuses to not attend. You only have to look at last year's Big One announcement when Twitter was covered with "I'll never go to another game again" over-dramatic moaning. Although it's been explained time and time again, I still think there are a lot of stubbornly ignorant people who refuse to understand the new system or realise how it improves on the awful top 8 system we've had for the past 6 seasons. The club need to do their bit as well, I don't think scrapping the A&L membership is a good move for example.'"
If the WCC was a proper comp and not just 2 friendlies on an under-card to Sunday's effort then many more would have made the effort (me included - I simply can't get excited about our game & quite frankly I've got better things to do), regardless of whether it's a chance to see the "superstars" of the NRL in action.
Add to that the media coverage: the BBC are only covering Sunday's game & none of their trails even mention us or Wire's game (that aside from slandering us in the narrative - penned by a Stainer I think). Not got Sly so I've no idea what they're doing.
Then you look at all the build up to the new season. Again, with almost every ignorant BBC pundit bleating on that the format was too complicated and they didn't understand it (no matter how simplistically or slowly it was explained), it gave anyone who was dithering about whether to attend games the perfect excuse to keep cherry-picking games.
The RFL have done next to nothing to promote these games beyond the core fan-base. Even the Wigan Ob's website leads with Latics' latest woes in the sport section.