Saints attendance in the "selective choice of the dead season" of 1995/96 was 7,144 whilst the previous season of 1994/95 it was 7,467, the one before 1993/94 it was 7,265 even in your supposed Halycon period of 1990 it was 7,391.

So what is this some other explanation for the crowd of 9,874 for the GB v Aus game at Wembley that you are referring to?

Looks like these "most ardent Wigan fan" may have to re-assess their views, although this does explain why a lot of Saints fans don't seem to realise rugby league existed prior to Super League - its because they never use to watch Saints in those days.

I note you haven't responded at all to the points I made about Halifax and the failure of the SC to ensure financial stability and the point about the inability of RL clubs to match wage inflation and the inevitable long term consequences of that.

But I won't duck your points. If you're right about Saints figures (any scousers want to confirm whether your crowd figures were just bad or were as truly awful as Paul is suggesting?) then certainly in Saints case and in that of many other clubs there wasn't a golden age (though the international scene was much healthier). To be honest I don't remember it as a golden age, its more about the fact that other sports - football and RU have kicked on from the early 90s and we haven't and now seem to be going backwards. Yes the crowds are reasonably healthy these days but finances aren't and our ability to attract and retain top players is under threat and there's a serious question mark over the long term future of the game.

I'd ask Paul T, who queried my point about the costs of building and running modern stadia, if I'm wrong about that, if old stadia really are cheaper then where is the money going from the increased crowds that Paul Y is talking about? Ticket prices have certainly increased at least in line with inflation yet clubs are still going bust and revenue doesn't seem to be going up (Wigan's is barely £5m although this is a bit artificial as lots of revenue is effectively diverted to the stadium company which in return charges the rugby club very little for arguably the best ground in the SL). It's certainly a conundrum!

I should also say Paul Y that I don't know the circumstances of the 1973 game, which is getting on for 40 years ago. I do know that crowds in the early 90s for internationals were much healthier than they are now, the world cup held here then was a real success in financial and crowd attendance terms, whereas England are now a laughing stock frankly at international level and the interest from fans is accordingly low.

Does any one think that the BBC's decision to move to Media City in Salford quays will have a benefit to the profile of our game in the long run. With the sports dept now being relocated up here hopefully it will have easier access to our star players

Only if they hire their staff from the local area. If the existing staff relocate to Manchester from London then little will change as the same attitudes will be prevelant.

One of the football fans who works in my office (60+ year old lady) made a comment to me yesterday: "I was listening to the radio the other day and I noticed that they always feature Rugby League news last - it feels like they'd promote a game of tiddly winks before they'd talk about your lot".

It's definitely a conundrum and one that none of us on here (on either side of the argument) are likely to have a 100% accurate answer to, given that we do not have (I'm assuming) access to all of the reported accounts for all RL clus over the past 20+ years.

I would say though that a newer stadium with increased revenues can only help the situation, all of the clubs who have or are about to move stadiums have made very clear that the cost of maintaining their old grounds were/are crippling them - that does not necessarily mean that a new stadium will be a magic bullet and turn them in to a profitable company, it does however imply that they should, at the very least, stop haemorrhaging money on maintaining and keeping safe an old, decaying ground. So in short, it's perfectly possible for a club to still lose money in better facilities, but just not as much as it had been in a crumbling old wreck that nobody wanted to go to.

If the clubs concerned aren't paying finance costs or high lease costs for the ground, then I agree the clubs' position should be a lot healthier. It doesn't seem to be though, which suggests that the financial mismanagement at a lot of clubs may be even more severe than is generally known.

The fact remains that lots of clubs are still losing money despite the low level of the SC. (This isn't an argument for keeping the SC at a low level, by the way, it's proof that clubs need to sort out their finances). If you have 10k fans paying £12 a ticket going to 15 home games then that alone covers the SC (£1.8m), even before Sky money, merchandising, sponsorship, matchday sales etc. Something seems to me to be going badly awry.

I understand there are smoke and mirrors in the case of Wigan in that the club doesn't get lots of revenue streams it would normally do because they go to the stadium company but in return gets to pay a low rent for a great stadium, which is why the revenue seems very low for such a big club, but that doesn't explain the position of lots of other clubs. Apparently most clubs can't pay any more than the SC level, which has been frozen for over a decade. It's not a good situation at all!

As someone was asking you can get most of the attendances from rlhererl including Saints away games. Overall Saints attendances tend to follow the same postwar pattern i.e. boom after the war, decline from the late 60s through to about 84-88 when there's a general increase depending upon against whom we're playing. If you look at Wire and Leeds games there's been a general increase since the late 80s for Saints with a slight decline for our games against you until Super League when there's been a slight increase.

It's in the other lesser fixtures though e.g. Wakefield where there are noticeable differences. The only times pre-SL that we had big crowds v Wakefield is in year's when we were near the top of the table in 88 (think we had an unbeaten start to the season that year or something similar) and 92 (Central Park Deadlock Year). Our lowest SL attendance for Wakefield is 6,746 which is still higher than 16 out of the previous 24 pre-SL. In fact, the average SL attendance against Wakefield is higher than all but one Wakefield game pre-SL since 1967. The one game that is higher was the year of the Central Park Deadlock.

Of course not all teams are the same i.e. Cas is a bit more up and down and Bradford soared from steady 6-7k pre-SL to 10k+ (only to slip back again). Where we've gained is by having less Cumbrian clubs who either didn't bring much support or failed to attract more local support than normal to Saints.

Overall there's been an upward trend since the glory years of the short-term imports (mid-80s) with a slight drop off in the couple of years pre-SL before a steady upward trend again. I expect with the new ground that there will be an upward trend again as most other clubs have experienced similar.

We can't raise the cap because we don't have the money people say, what's to say we can't get 3rd party sponsorship deals excluded from the cap but cannot exede a certain amount?

Another way would be to get rid of Harlequins and Wakefield and replace them with Widnes and Halifax, the novelty of playing with the big boys would bump their home crowds up and bump others up when they travel to away games. One in Lancs and one in Yorks to help with this, clubs would prosper and a rise in the cap would be attainable.

One thing to do would be let each club have a certain ammount outside of the cap (Say £50,000 a year for arguements sake) which they could use only if they wanted and if they could afford it whereby they could snare Union players/French/Southern players to trial them. Say for instance, Crusaders could have a major financial backer and want to sign Gavin Henson to build the profile of the club in Wales but is reluctant to use a big part of the cap on a gamble so the cap is holding the sport back, if they had in place what I proposed he could have some counted on the cap and the extra £50,000 a year to subsidise his wages. RL gets a ready made celeb/star in Wales and generates more publicity in Wales for RL, everyones a winner baby! You heard it here first.

Gareth Thomas had a higher profile then orange man and it didnt work

Yes and the news more often than not is about injuries or suspensions! Do our administrators ever feed good news items to the media?

I'm really glad you're not an economist. In 4 years of Super League Widnes did not break 7,000 in average attendances (and yes, I'm well aware that's still better than Harlequins, although it's largely not really an improvement on Wakefield). I see little/nothing to suggest that the future would be any different.

Leigh's average attendance in SL in '05 was less than 5 thousand, and yet prior to their promotion everyone was proclaiming how wonderful it was that a traditional club was coming back in to the top flight and that they'd show us how to get attendances. As surely being in the top flight would bring back those people who abandoned the club and didn't come to watch because they [iweren't[/i playing top flight.

This common theory that old club = huge fan base may well be true, there won't be many locals in the towns that these clubs are based who aren't aware of the game and their local club, but they seem just as reluctant to come and watch as the people of Wrexham or Twickenham.

I remember at an RLSA AGM one year, John Huxley was a guest and he stated quite categorically that he was always sending "good news" stories out to his media distribution lists, and it was simply a case of the papers ignoring those stories.

I've got to admit though, the press@rlfans address around that time didn't ever seen to receive much traffic from him.

Getting rid of Quins would be a disaster. It would simply confirm our status as a local sport played only in the M62 corridor. If we're truly to show ourselves as a national sport, not just a regional one, we need all the expansion clubs.

Do that and you may as well admit that RL will be a 2nd rate sport in the UK forever.