A predictably ill informed rant.
Firstly consolidating league games means Sky are able to show most or all of the games as the incremental costs of deploying teams of crew to all grounds would not be feasible - in turn clubs would struggle to offer any sort of quality coverage for season ticket holders. Likewise most clubs still have a lot of staff furloughed so reopening their stadia will cost a fair amount of money, added to which are the costs of making those stadia covid safe.

The RFL has a contract with Wembley and agreed to play the game there when fans were expected to be present. Ripping that up would no doubt cost a lot more than going ahead with it.

It all comes down to what is the most cost effective way of of completing the season and meeting the requirements of the tv contracts which will enable our clubs the best chance of surviving this. Comparing to football is really pretty pointless.

I think the big issue is when everyone is leaving. At a pub people generally leave at a staggered time (even with the 22:00 curfew, not everyone will leave at that time) whereas at the rugby, pretty much all 12,000 or so will leave at the same time. Think what the steps, concourse, just outside the stadium and the bridge over the canal are like at full time. Likewise the toilets and beer queues at half time. That's a lot worse than any pub (particularly with table service in place).

Yeah i think some staggering naturally happens when people arrive, I can see how that could be managed with advance warnings that it will take longer than usual for people to go in, stewards ensuring people distance whilst queueing to get in, and don't hang around on the concourse once they are in (might have to close the kiosks to help this) and outside you have unlimited space to queue in.

It's leaving where I think the issue would be, you have a lot less space and a lot more people wanting to be in the same place at the same time. You have to let them access the toilets on the concourse so you either let them leave as normal, resulting in crowds on the stairs and concourse, or you limit the amount that leave at a time, which would probably mean people are crowding on the concourse and steps inside the stadium for longer. Plus you'll get people who will just not do as they're told when leaving, the threat of being kicked out isn't a big deal if you want to leave anyway and have a train/bus to catch or whatever. A lot of our stewards don't exactly put the fear of God into you either.

Our usual crowds would be at 50% or so of the ground capacity and that would clearly be too much in the current climate but I don’t see why grounds couldn’t run at 10/20% of capacity for example. If they’re saying people can go to pubs, restaurants etc. were you’re sat inside and now with colder weather coming any decent ventilation is unlikely, you can go on an aeroplane in a confined space with 200-500 other people etc then it seems strange to say you can’t go and sit in the open air, metres away from other people to watch live sport. Yes you may need to stagger exits from stadium by block or similar, you may need one way systems to go to the toilet, you may need to get apps in place to order food/drink, local pubs may need to do bookings only on match days to limit numbers, you may have to encourage people to use their own transport where possible but it seems very doable in comparison.

I’m not saying it should be done now or moaning about it, people’s health comes first but you can understand sports clubs owners/chief Execs being confused that pubs, restaurants and airlines are being given leeway when their circumstances are probably even harder to make secure and police.

rlGerman footballrl managed to get fans back in fairly reasonably. Then again, they've got everything under a bit more control over there.

You are right in saying it is to save money, but at the same time games could have been organise better. For example, why have both teams from east of the pennines playing on the opposites side of the pennines and vice versa. Surely it would have made more sense for the "Yorkshire" based clubs to play their home games at Headingley and the "Lancashire based clubs to play their home games at Warrington. That way, Sky would have saved even more money as their equipment would only be at two grounds and not four as been the case up to now plus clubs would be saving money in not having unnecessary travel costs to play a all "Yorkshire game in Lancashire and a all "Lancashire" game in Yorkshire which also happened in recent weeks.

As for Wembley, I feel sure that they would be willing to overlook any contract in the present pandemic situation and the expense and travel involved to both finalists from what is a minority sport.

Not a rant, just one of many with better organising skills!

Kick off been brought forward 30 mins due to new closing times.

I would assume that the cost of cancelling the booking of Wembley and hiring another venue was greater than the cost of playing at an empty but already booked Wembley. The loss of crowd money would be the same either way. Sticking with Wembley also lessens the possibility of fans of the competing finalists travelling to and gathering outside the stadium as they could more easily have done that for a final in the north.

The 1932 cup final was played at Central Park not Swinton. Swinton played in that final, losing to Leeds.

Correct, it was held at Central Park, but how many others spotted the mistake?

Fair point, given the amount of idiots out there you’d probably be right in saying there’d be issues with some.

I thought you were against a fans return?

I am. I think the risk when people are leaving is too high. As explained in the part of my quote you deleted.

I agree with you it’s when fans are leaving the bottle necks occur,I’m sure people for a game or two would be very polite but soon enough the ruck to get out would be back.

At present it’s simply not worth it