Quote ="wrencat1873"I do agree that "the big day out" at Wembley has now disappeared as a concept and certainly for the cost involved, a trip to either Toulouse or Perpignan is way more attractive and generally cheaper (but maybe not the beer) and with the GF being the major event to bring the curtain down on the season, much of the "celebration" aspect has gone from Wembley too.
Not being a fan of football of American football, I dont know if those events do more to "make a day of it" or whether the fans attending for football are happy to have their big day out.
When you consider that the play off games for the lower leagues gain huge crowds, as do the FA Cup semi finals etc, Wembley does still seem a huge draw for the round ball game and yes, generally, football is massively better supported than RL, I still feel that moving the final North, to allow easier access and a cheaper day out, is underselling the game and any "draw" that Wembley has, would be lost forever.
Moving to somewhere like the Millennium stadium could be an option.
Still a great venue, a little smaller and we may just interest a few Welsh fans into the game ?
However, this would be waving the white flag over an event that used to be something quite special.
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I agree it is a landmark fixture especially as it is the only major RL final on BBC.
I am a traditionalist and don't particularly want to see it moved, my comments were aimed more at explaining why it is poorly attended and maybe that is the level of attendance we should expect.
Having said all that there are ways the attendance can be improved.
Firstly if the RL accept that it is our major showpiece then maybe they should use some of the sponsorship money to encourage fans to attend.
We have approx 30 clubs in the league and numerous amateur clubs. The work should start now to try and encourage all those clubs to take one or more coach loads of fans to next years final.
All clubs have local businesses who sponsor matches, encourage the clubs to use their contacts to get these firms to sponsor a coach trip to the final, maybe for their own employees and or other fans.
In terms of advertising costs it isn't expensive and maybe could be built in either the price of match sponsorship or ground advertisements..
Each club could start a club (similar to say a Xmas club ) where fans could pay in an amount per month or per week towards the cost of a Wembley ticket again this could be wrapped up with maybe payments tothe clubs lottery fund.
I'm sure there are numerous other ways it could be done but the RFL need to find a way of making it worthwhile for the grassroots clubs to put the effort into it.
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