Totally Wilf. Am I right in thinking Wigan brought just a hundred or two last night? If so that's awful on paper, looking at the table and their legendary status. However, with Sky these days offering world-class coverage (erm, in some ways?!!), the cost of live SL and Friday night travelling it isn't a surprise now unfortunately.
The vibe you get around the city is that most (perhaps 70%-80%) of RL fans prefer Sundays. Friday's in particular seem to cause so many headaches, but Hull and Rovers you would think know their businesses better than us on the 'outside' so it's a strange one.
If the clubs really do mean what they say though when it comes to the real Derby Day it's time to both pick different friendly opponents (all this b*****s about 'intensity' is daft; Hull v Leeds, Rovers v Cas, job done).
Stand up to the RL and say Magic needs to change, but again, maybe keep it all-Yorkshire ties if they really insist on maintaining the Magic concept?
The derby definitely needs actions like these to get back the feel of a 'can't miss' event that it used to be. Personally I knocked the friendly on the head maybe three years ago or so. Problem though is that a figure close to 10,000 and all the add-ons (food, drink etc) clearly still makes it financially worthwhile for them, which some would see as reason to keep it, but at the expense of the proper games we all love I say it's wrong to have this view.

The club mascot for the occassion is Sharknado the Thundershark.

I'm sure in 2000 that was the badge we used to celebrate the Millennium. Chuff knows where they've dug it up from though because I've just tried to find it on Google and found nothing!

I actually thought someone at SKY was having a merger dig or something, hell of a hack by a Rovers fan (any idiot with a few quid can hire a plane ) but had a look on google its on the front cover of Boulevard voices by Raymond Fletcher. As you say god knows where SKY have got it from or why they used it.

That's the one, knew I hadn't dreamt it!!
Seriously though, why are Sky using this one??!!