And obsessed with numbers, were they all Adrian Mole like at the age of 13 and 3/4?

I remain unconvinced that

Gan Eden

equals

"RL fans"

Lots of people, either on here or people who I have met and know, are too impatient over a lot of things. From the expansion clubs, to the international game, to the Magic weekend

why would another year in the championship have made us good enough for the superleague? only the superleague can make you good enough for the superleague. I really enjoyed the years in the lower league some great rugby, great fans and more winning obviously

but the gap is so painful.
the attendances will flux for different reasons, as for all clubs. is our variation any more alarming then say leeds who can go from 13k to 17 dependng on who they are playing? at the moment the opponents are very important - sorry but unsurprisingly st helens, wigan etc will attract more coverage and attendance then castleford.
I dont have conclusive proof but i think people have been enjoying sat evenings more then sunday afternoons for some reason. we will see if that holds up later in the season.
the media is kinda pre-occupied with cardiff city pushing for promotion to the premiership (and the return of the swansea-cardiff derby) as well as the bloody blues deciding to do something for once in their existence. we started very well, get a fair amount of ongoing coverage, but it will pick up later in the year. we need to make the summer our own. in fact we've started to develop a relationship with the other summer sport - cricket, who in case we forget have a little matter of an ashes test this summer

(for example they sell our merchandise and tickets at sophia gardens!)
The pyramid of player development has come on leaps and bounds with 10 teams putting out from 2-3 (im not sure if they all get out a full complement) junior sides which is feeding into four regional train on squads which is feeding into at the crusaders under 16s, under 18s and the reserves (now to be under 20s'). so the roots are deepening.
lots more needs to be done and we are not going to do a catalans at this moment but overall an area of over 2 million people has a serious rugby league presence where before none existed, thousands of youngsters now have a serious choice in rugby codes where before there was just one. thats the real nature of expansion. obsess about headline crowd figures if you like but try and keep a mind of the broader picture.

werent le catalans crowds sub 4000 when they first started out? theyre doing alright now....

Why? They need to be financially viable long before 10 years after joining or they'll fold. Those crowds aren't enough to run a club on.

Yes but their first SL crowd was 11000, a bit of a difference between a French Elite crowd and a SL crowd

Yes because junior development really pays the bills

To any mind but that of a short-termist economic illiterate village idiot, yes, it does.

Personally the whole dumb thread smacks of a juvenile who has simply been aching for a smaller crowd to be posted all season long, and took great pleasure in ejaculating the nasty OP at what he saw as the first opportunity. Grow up, ffs.

they need to win simple as

its hard to market a team thats languishing at the bottom of the table

I dont think a club needs good crowds to be financially viable. They need good crowds if they want to be financially well off

its all about winning as me being a giants fan can testify, we we were first in sl and losing every week for years our crowds were on a par with celtics now look at them currently averaging over 9000, so give it time.

Gateshead went bust (well taken over) after a season of higher crowds than this, so what crowds the club gets 10 years down the line is irrelevent. Also first season crowds tend to be higher, not lower, than clubs eventually get. London Broncos got high crowds when they started SL and now Quins crowds are only getting worse, and over 12 years of SL there certainly hasn't seen any improvement, so why should it at Crusaders. If the club start to win then things will change, but can't see that happening any time soon

Well you need good crowds or a rich backer ultimately. Crusaders seem to have the latter at the moment

I dont remember catalan getting below 4000 in thier first year but someone mite have the stats to prove me wrong.

"Tend"? You whinge on as if we had been introducing new clubs by the dozen for centuries, and there were statistical conclusions to be drawn.

"Why should?" - Better ask on what basis what happens in London would have any relevance to what happens in South Wales. Or for that matter the south of France.



I don't care what you "can't see happening any time soon". Whatever team is at the bottom of the table is likely to be getting the smaller crowds, it's life.

If you think 2857 is an exciting crowd for a brand new club when the novelty value is still there and if you think it's a viable crowd to run a SL club on then that's your view, but I judge all clubs by the same standard as expansion clubs are more likely to fold, not less, if things don't go to plan. It is clear that the higher crowds from the novelty value have dropped off due to the team losing every game.

And yes what happened in France isn't relevent as people actually want to watch Catalans and the club are actually good enough to win games in SL. As for London they actually started well, but noone wants to watch now they're Harlequins, but they certainly wouldn't have got a crowd this low in their first season. Either way the assumption that crowds in expansion areas go up over time is totally baseless and the limited information we have if anything suggests the opposite

depends how many are paying to get in at Brewery Field, Gateshead had a lot of freebies.

I think 8,007 at Warrington, 5,521 at Wakefield (against Wigan no less) and 4,165 at Salford should be a bit more of a concern than the attendance at Celtic.

All 3 of the above clubs have been around over 100 years, compared with the 3 years of Celtic, who started with no kind of history whatsoever.

[url=http://www.slstats.org/t44/Les%20Catalan%20Dragons/2006/Summary.htmlfirst year stats for the froggies[/url
6,542 average year 1.

In 2006 they never have a crowd below 4000 and have gone upwards from there.

Their lowest crowd was 4197 against Quins.

You can hardly blame folk for focussing on the area that the RFL have decided is the single most important area of assessment for clubs looking to renew their licence. At least 2, arguably 3, of the 10 criteria are directly related to attendance. Its naive to think in those circumstances discussion of attendance won't happen or indeed isn't valid.

It doesn't, of course, mean that the criticism is necessarily valid.

I think the point that the original poster was making was the fact that people were very quick on RLfans to jump at slating Salford's attendances... yet slow on the uptake of Celtics.

Salford haven't had much luck in the opening games to do anything to bump up the attendances.... of the 5 home games so far.... we played 2 of the 3 most poorly represented away followings with the visits of Celtic and Harlequins.... A decent crowd against Wigan.... A Good Friday game against a Warrington team who's following would have been much more should they have been winning (plus the weather was shocking)... and a game against Hull... when the Champions of Europe were playing round the corner at the same time... and Hull City were at home to Liverpool an hour or so earlier which I'm sure took a couple of hundred of their away following.

I'm not too worried about the attendances under the circumstances.

the acid test is the quins and Catalan game, could it be under 1000

Think you may need to check your facts...