Yes please, can you arrange it for Saturday 11th Jan as I fly home on the 17th (worst luck!!)

You forgot the spoon for his Pudding

years ago when channel 4 started showing american football they realized no one knew the rules or understood what was going on.
the first few years they ran a program the week before the season that basically explained what would be going on.
As the season started they would explain what teams were trying to do or what the rules were.

My point is that if we want to introduce people to TGG then we need to do the same.
Explain the thinking behind what teams are trying to do and the rules.
God knows there are people who have been going for years who would find it useful as well.

Not sure if they are simply averages over the half of the ongoing 2012/13 season to date and as pointed out the Saracens one includes the Twickenham fixture so you can probably disregard that one, the others are very healthy though.

What is less healthy in RU is the inability of the sport to spread professionally outside of its heartlands (is this sounding familiar), my brother is involved in coaching at our local RU club and I have done some admin for them so I'm well aware of the sort of support that they get from the ERU - its immense support - and I'm also aware of what support the likes of Leeds Carnegie give to their local amatuer clubs, but there is a huge lack of support back the other way.

When Leeds were in the premier league they struggled to get crowds above 5000 which given the number of amatuer RU clubs just in Yorkshire and their membership numbers (most of them run a team in each age group from 8 upwards), was actually quite pathetic - I've been to a lot of Leeds Carnegie games at Headingley on freebies that came via our local amatuer club, yet flooding the clubs with free tickets they still couldn't farm more than 5000 attendances.

Its a very strange situation and one which the holding company at Headingley have basically given up on now having withdrawn a lot of financial support and resigned to the fact that they are a second division team - there just isn't the support in the north for professional RU.

Union attendances dominate league. Take the last two world cups to be held in Austrialia the vast majority of games in both world cups were played in the so called league strongholds of queensland and new south wales. 2003 union world cup Total attendance 1,837,547 average 38,282 per match en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Rugby_World_Cup 2008 league world cup Total attendance 293,965 average 16,331 per match en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Rugby ... _World_Cup

Union attendances dominate league. Take the last two world cups to be held in Austrialia the vast majority of games in both world cups were played in the so called league strongholds of queensland and new south wales. 2003 union world cup Total attendance 1,837,547 average 38,282 per match en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2003_Rugby_World_Cup 2008 league world cup Total attendance 293,965 average 16,331 per match en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2008_Rugby ... _World_Cup

and todays massive union attendances include 4.500 at sarries 4.600 at landan welsh, and a massive 7.000 at the huge wasps v bath local derby.

I guess geography is not your strong point, but I agree with your point about their attendances being inflated by the "on the road games"

We can over inflate the gates as a means to getting better sponsorship deals and tv deals.

are they not both in london? shows how much union i watch.lol

It's more geography related than Union

Why are we going on about Rugby Union crowds for. What possible interest can that be to Rugby League supporters. If you are going to compare the size of the gate perhaps we should look at the price of their tickets as well.

League crowds were always loads bigger than union crowds but in the last few years Union has overtaken League and they've done it while charging higher gate prices at the same time. We need to find a way of doing what they are. I do agree with you that they are not compeing with us for spectators but we do need to be competing with them in order to get similar sponsorship deals that they get. Just look at the billboards around the grounds. They have luxury car companies and computer firms and we have local builders and Uncle Joe's Mint Balls.