I wish gary Fawcett would check his facts before he starts spouting his propaganda speel. I know he likes to big up everything at the moment, but this is no excuse for spouting rubbish. In the Keighley news today JD is calling for a crowd of 2,000 and saying he hopes for the biggest crowd for a decade. This is a possibility, but then you get Gary Fawcett getting carried away and saying it should be the biggest since 1995.

Our attendances in the Cougarmania era didn't peak until 1996 with a couple of 6,000 plus crowds against Hull and Salford and we regularly topped 3,000 right up until 2001.

Lets hope we do get over 2,000 on Sunday as it should be a cracking game and for the first time for a decade I feel we are able to compete with the best teams outside Super League.

I reckon it'll be 1400 at the most on Sunday.

I'm guessing these "stats" only cover League games? I can think of a couple of cup games in the last 5 years where we've had around 3,000 on.

You have to feel for the guy as he must be under a considerable amount of pressure at the moment with all the investigations and eyes on him at the minute.

Oh well you can only get away with things for so long before it all sneaks up on you.

Before this gets out of hand.

Any one with a axe to grind, don't bother posting.

I have no problem with optimism but we need to be realistic. By the time we were getting crowds of that magnitude, we had experienced 5 successful seasons, Phil Larder was coaching england, we were winning that majority of league matches by a considerable margin and had some excellent Challenge Cup runs, I cried all night after Jonathan Davies scored at the death for Warrington in 94 we came so close. Also if you look at the attendance figures for the division last year, there were only Halifax and Widnes who actually had an average crowd of over 2000.

What's needed to bring people back down to Cougar park is consistency, we need to be one of the top teams in the division year after year, which I am sure the JD and the team are capable of, but one step at a time Mr Fawcett.

I remember Neil Spencer was saying some nonsense to the Keighley News a few years back about how we would definitely be getting 1,000 attendances at the next game when in actual fact we would only be getting no more than 600 through the doors at the time.

I do think Gary Fawcett is talking nonsense about the attendance comparing to attendances in the Cougarmania days, but I definitely can't blame him for promoting the first game of the season in order to get more people attending?

Anyway, if we consistently manage to get 900 home fans through the gate at every game this season, that will be great. When teams with a decent away following are at our ground, we will definitely be getting over 1,000 that way.

He's trying market the club to the casual supporter, as opposed to preaching to the converted.

I can't see much of a problem with that.

It took us one succesful season, not 5.

We had big crowds towards the end of the 92/93 season, which was our first decent season.

Give the bloke a break nothing wrong with optimism whether it pans out or not would folk rather him say dont bother trying crowds will not get better.

As guess who indicated its clear some have axe to grind, why not approach gary direct instead of here.

I for one am looking forward to what the season holds no doubt highs and lows along the way.

We have home draw in northern rail v fev.

Quite agree.

Seem to remember [ithat[/i critical game against Batley in the rain having a huge crowd. I'm sure Mick O'Neil said we squeezed that many in they didn't actually know the true crowd.

The crowd was somewhere over 5,200.

A brilliant, but wet night. Didn't think we had a chance after 'Big Joe' (Grima) was sent off for 'stiff-arming' Grayshon in the first 5 minutes but then we showed our real character!

To win with only 12 men for over 75 minutes really is something both then and now. I can still see Joe's expression on his face when we were presented with the trophy and how he must have felt at letting-down his team-mates!

A video of the game should be shown to the curent squad so that they know what 'Cougarmania' was actually like and how they must perform to rekindle it!

The implication from Mick was that the true figure was quite a bit more!

I have no problem with him targeting casual supporters. Every club should be doing that.

I do have a problem with the way he's trying. The soundbytes he's coming out with are just starting to sound daft now. "We're going for a Super League licence" "We're going to Fax and win by 20 points" and now apparently we're going to some how more than double our attendance in a week? It seems he wants to sell the club to the wider general public by making wild assumptions.

What's wrong with something a long the lines of - "We're playing the current Championship title holders Featherstone, who are favourites to win the title. In the close season our head coach JD has done an amazing job to put together one of the best squads we've had in years with some great signings and I think we've got a good chance of beating them if we play to our potential. With lots of talented players on show, it bears all the hallmarks for being a really great game and a good advertisement for Championship Rugby League. Featherstone have a reputation for bring a large away following which will make for a tremendous atmosphere at Cougar Park. So come on down and sample some of the rebirth of Cougarmania."?

You're being far too sensible now. This is Cougars we are talking about - jump on the roller coaster and hang on