and who honestly wants to go to Birmingham or Coventry???

I'd go ya cheeky get

IMO though teams in the Midlands would be far more popular than anything Quins have ever done. Its easy to get to, 2 hours travelling max for fans of each team.

It did look a bit dire (attendance wise) on TV and that can't be good if the objective is to promote the game to new pastures.

I think the magic weekend concept is a good idea and is here to stay. That said we need to keep it away from Rugby Union stadiums, as it will never work in the Union heatlands.
Emirates in London would be ideal but you would never get a premiership groundsman or chairman agreeing to seven games on their pitch over two days.
Coventry not a bad idea but what is there in Coventry to attract people for the weekend.
Opening weekend of the season, too cold in my opinion.
Challenge Cup Magic Weekend does not give fans from all Super Leagues clubs the chance to get together.
My view is that we should keep the magic weekend, move it to the end of May, I like the idea of pairing up 1st v 2nd etc, which could be fixed 4 weeks in advance for marketing purposes. The venue should be Blackpool. Blackpool ticks all the boxes for me and we should fill the stadium and it would look great on the telly.

Blackpool is a good venue with one slight problem, the ground only holds around 16,000. We would sell it out but that wouldnt be such a great achievement....

Agree with you Bondi, but selling out 16,000 is better than the empty stadiums in Edinburgh & Cardiff and will give us a platform to move forward from.

I agree it would look alot better on TV than Cradiff or Edinburgh, but IMO that would be a backwards step and an admission that this concept isnt working. I would love it in Blackpool, im sure alot of fans would. But for me the stadium just isnt big enough, it has to be at least 25,000.

The problem with Blackpool is that you may end up with the situation in which 16000 tickets are sold for each day but only half that number end up in the ground for any one game as supporter fluctuate between the pubs and the games they choose to see. You end up with a half or 3/4 full stadium and regular supporters of the teams playing locked out, which seems madness to me.

This is why the whole concept is flawed in my opinion.Very few people want to sit in one place to watch four games - I don't even know of anyone who watched all four games on the saturday at home, you can have too much of a good thing and eight hours of back to back RL is just too much for most. So do we go for a big stadium to accomodate everyone, knowing full well that it will rarely be half full (at best) or do we have the situation described above?

The weekend is trying to be too many things and falling short on all fronts. When the concept was first announced I thought it could be a success but after four attempts, all the people I speak to have reservations of some sort. We need to get rid of the extra game for a start to make the regular competition even once again if we are to have any credibility outside of RL. Next we need to make the weekend actually mean something - Maybe take the quarter finals of the challenge cup on the road so that it is no longer an automatic right to SL clubs and clubs outside of the top tier can get a look in every once in a while. Two games a day will see more people in the ground for the entire event and still leave plenty of time for ripping it up in the pubs before and after.

RFL must pull rabbits out of the hat to save the Magic Weekend www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... urrayfield

RFL must pull rabbits out of the hat to save the Magic Weekend www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/20 ... urrayfield

It could give somebody top spot unfairly. If we were to finish 1st on the strength of playing Salford and you playing Hudds then that wouldn't be fair. 26 games...done.

Does anybody know what the attendances were?

A man with sense.

Get rid of the extra game and there is no need for play offs to decide the championship - which is another argument altogether! After 26 games, 13 home, 13 away, play each opponent twice, and the top team after 26 games are the best. But thats makes sense and Sky won't have their final.