Crowd on Friday?

Quote: pie.warrior "should make early rounds a voucher scheme. you go to round 4 you get 10 points...round 5 you get 7 points.....round 6 you get 4 points......

those with most points get first chance of tickets for semis and finals regardless of any other qualification for ST's etc.etc.

need to do something to make earlier rounds better attending'"

I agree that something needs to be done to boost cup attendances for the games other than the final.

Such a scheme is suggested each year by different fans and I would say it has merit, in theory, as far as prioritising semi final ticket sales goes. As people who have taken an interest in the cup run and have paid to see those games in the preceeding 3 rounds should be able to continue to cheer on the team (hopefully to Wembley). The sudden interest from people who largely didn't bother with earlier rounds is frustrating particularly if you miss out. This has become more of an issue since we started to actually win things again. I am a ST holder (so get to buy them straight away, but I love the cup and go to every knockout game) and remember in 2009 going to get my SF ticket (as soon as they were on sale) and finding an empty area outside the ticket office and walking straight to the counter and being served. Two years later (after our GF win) for our SF tickets I had to queue for four hours and still with a long line behind me (again on the first morning of sales). The same applied for last year's SF though I personally had to queue for a shorter time. So for a non ST holder who had been to every round to then miss out to those previously not bothered would I imagine be very frustrating.

The main problems with running such a scheme (and why it is sound in theory but would fall down in practice) would be in it's application when selling tickets. First of all you would have the ST holders who have been told they have priority as a benefit of their ST and would demand it. ST holders who have attended earlier rounds would get first opportunity (double priority), but then you would have dispute from fans over who should be next in the pecking order, ST holders who have not attended a cup game but who have the ST priority benefit, or non ST holders who have paid to see earlier rounds so have a right to priority via the scheme. Either way you are going to annoy a proportion of your customer base, not good PR, particularly if the allocation sells out before going on general sale. To avoid such a clash ST holder priority for knockout games would need to be removed but that would likely affect ST sales (even if many don't care about those games until at leat the semi final as many will like the idea of getting first dibs on the big games when considering a purchase).

Then you have the problem with physically selling the tickets. What would stop John Smith who attended the round 4, 5 and QF games but is going to be away on holiday on the SF date handing his early round tickets to Jim Jones, so that Jim who hasn't attended any cup games can present the tickets and get first dibs on a ticket for the semi final causing actual attendees to miss out. Measures needed to prevent such things happening would be too time consuming at the ticket office (very costly if done by phone) and would cause antagonistic situations for the staff when they had to refuse somebody a ticket or when somebody was going to be late for work/ sick of waiting as the queue didn't go down.

Also how do you keep an accurate track of the priority points for a fan who decides on the day that they will attend a cup game and pays on the gate away from home. Where is the record of that specific person's attendance kept? As already covered producing and presenting a ticket as proof when buying is problematic and not foolproof.

Using such a scheme for tickets for the final would be pointless. If anyone wants to attend the final they could buy a ticket from early March (it may even be Feb) direct from the RFL. Two years ago I went to our SF, then came home and bought tickets direct from the RFL that evening. All ticket price bands were still available, the site even showed me which half of the stadium was the Wigan end so I could get a ticket among our support. Why queue needlessly? There is no need for prioritising Wigan's allocation (or any other team's for that matter) should they reach the final though some ST holders will like that "benefit".

There does need to be something done to re-ignite the general interest in the cup rounds but it needs to be a game-wide intitiative rather than individual club efforts. One way to help it would IMHO to put the momentum back in the cup by condensing the time over which it is played. The stuttering way the rounds are organised in recent years does little to maintain interest as after round 5 there is a massive gap to the QFs, SFs and then to the final. The cup is largely forgotten about before the bigger games come round and the early rounds have lost association with the business end of the competition. If the final is moved back to May then ,with our season starting in Feb, there is ample opportunity for the earlier rounds to be played at regular intervals leading into it. A cup run will then feel more like a cup run rather than disparate results scattered within a league season. Going off this year with a Cup Final on May 18th (1 week after FA Cup) at 3 week intervals beforehand you would have R3 (2nd Feb- when our season began this year), R4 (23rd Feb), R5 (16th March), QF (6th April), SF (27th April) The whole thing could easily shift back 1 week and still work. That way momentum and interest can be more easily maintained in each round of the cup at a time when people haven't seen much rugby in a while so will be eager to attend matches. The Magic Weekend would move to August bank holiday when clubs are vying for position and a round of league games can be more important.