You really don't get it do you Billy boy.You are being effortless wound up,whilst thinking that you are doing the trolling - no wonder you can't get a job and rely on Benefits.

My earlier invitation for you to provide some positive and welcome news on SL attendances this season and your ineffectiveness and inability to do just that has been duly noted.

You seem like the ideal candidate for a job down at the RFL.

When they had cheap tickets last year and attracted maybe 2k more fans, people on here complained that the tickets were so cheap and the game is being devalued. This year they revert to regular prices, attendances dip as expected and they are uniformly criticised for that as well. Huddersfield are not as big as other clubs, so all they can do is grow at their own pace. Go back to 2002 and you find them struggling to attract 4,000 fans. Other clubs like Bradford and Cas seem to have lost fans in that time, so why do Huddersfield get all the stick?

When they sold cheap tickets for the cup game with Leeds so it looked good on TV, they were criticised by half of this board then for devaluing the game. They can't win.

Those deals are taken up by a few hundred fans at most. I'm not sure why you expect so much more for a Monday night game on TV, when compared with their season ticket sales. Last year they got a smaller crowd for a Monday game with Hull KR despite having season tickets half of the price of this year.

I'm surprised that you need to ask the question.
Cas, first of all, is a small town and their club is struggling at present and its population is quoted at approx. 38000
Huddersfield, lie second in the league table and have been play off "contenders" and have a population of approx. 145,000 and yet Castleford attract higher average attendances.
This is one of many reasons why your club gets so much stick over its level of support

Huddersfield also has a football team that has been better supported. It's a lot more difficult when the sport faces such apathy in a town, you know.

And Huddersfield are not my team.

The point is still valid and more worryingly for Huddersfield, is the fact that they are in the birthplace of the sport, play out of a modern stadium, currently second in the comp. and are bankrolled by Mr Davy.
Short of dominating the sport for a number of seasons, this is as good as it is likely to get for them.

Great, could they spend some of that on cardboard cut out fans, so that televised games involving the 2nd in the League don't make our sport look like a joke that nobody can be bothered attending, on national TV ?

Disappointment mainly, I suspect. Yes, Bradford have lost fans but their gates shot up when they were good. And Cas have always punched well above their weight in terms of their attendances. Huddersfield have had a decade of near-constant improvement, they're financed by someone who genuinely cares about the club and they have some pretty good players on their books who should be more than capable of pulling the crowds in. But it ain't happening. And that reinforces the point to many of us that the game, for whatever reason, is likely to remain largely unappreciated in many places.

Has the club *asked* the people of Huddersfield why they're not interested? Presumably they've done this type of exercise at some point. I'd love to know what the results were - we all have theories, but real data would be much more interesting.

RL doesn't have a great record of CRM/Surveys.....if the people of Huddersfield were to be canvassed, I'd start with the lapsed ST holders, followed by the lapsed "casuals".

But, given the RFL claimed 50% of the fans at the double header at Wembley were southerners, but didn't give that data to the London Broncos, I suspect that they didn't collect the data and that they were guessing...or they thought paying by credit card meant the purchaser was from "that there London"

I have suggested to Bill Eve that he gets himself a clipboard and canvases Huddersfield town centre on a Saturday. Sounds like a little army could be involved, everyone seems to want to know why the attendances are down.

I've been in contact with Huddersfields sponsors and they will loan you clipboards FOC.

You can make this happen Bill.

Giants played Hull KR at Home on Monday 11th June 2012.

The attendance was 4962.

So congratulations to Giants on improving their attendance for the Monday game.

All Joking aside, I moved to NZ in 2009......the then Harlequins RL have all my contact details (UK address which I still own, emails) but have never once contacted me with anything other than a blanket offering. I had purchased tickets and merch on-line and in the case of the new broncos, had it delivered to my UK address for forwarding as they didn't do international delivery

....still, nothing to encourage me back to the stoop.
I am sure some clubs are on the ball with this kind of stuff, but to me, it seems strange that the RFL aren't offeing advice to those clubs in trouble.....as well as doing it themselves.

I bought tickets for the Wembley double header in 2011 for a mate from Leeds for his birthday.....I also requested Free tickets from the Broncos for the same guy for the Castleford game that year....both with him as the delivery address in London and my credit card address in Brentford....neither of us have received anything from the RFL since.

The days of sticking posts in the ground and announcing a KO time are long gone....somebody needs to sack the with the penchant for drawing cartoons and hire a DIRECT MARKETING COMPANY to get fans back through the turnstyles....IMHO that is!

as I have said before and will say again, yes our support is pretty dire. but taking into consideration that from the late 70's right through to the late 90's, Huddersfield were a lower league club, struggling with financial troubles, not knowing from one week to the next whether we would survive or not. surviving on gates of hundreds rather than thousands.

most other super league clubs throughout that period were regular top flight clubs,enjoying the odd success here and there, and maintaining a fan base that was already in place. most clubs had a hardcore support of around 5,000 ish give or take, ours were 500.

most fans of other super league clubs watched their teams in the top flight year after year and then their kids started watching them, the their kids started watching them,it was part of normal family life for lots of people.

in Huddersfield,we didn't have that. our hardcore support were the diehards from the 60's and 70's still clinging on until the end ( although thankfully that never did come!) we had to literally build our supporter base up from scratch, people got into watching Huddersfield, like me, through word of mouth not through family ties.

when we did finally get into the top flight and started getting beaten heavily most weeks, people who did have a interest in rugby league went to watch leeds and Bradford not Huddersfield, so again, we had to more or less start from scratch.
considering it has taken us 30 years to play catch up with the rest of you, I don't think we are doing that bad.
yes we would all like to see us pull in 10,000 each week, warrington don't, even with their pedigree and recent success so I cant see how we would be expected to.

our crowds are poor yes but you also have to take into context and compare with other clubs who have always had a decent fan base.

I wouldn't expect Doncaster, Rochdale or swinton to suddenly start pulling in crowds 10x what they were 20 years ago if they were in the same position.

When our crowds are the talking point its cos our team are usually doing well.....for years you lot had the fact we were crap to beat us with ...now we're not you've had to find another stick !! You lot carry on moaning about our crowds and our happy bunch of 5000 fans will carry on watching our team destroy yours

Leeds vs Cas 2012 - 10,582
Leeds vs Cas 2013 - 17,035

UPDATE...
[uSL Round 18 attendances - comparison to same fixtures last year[/u

Leeds V Castleford in 2013 = 17,035
Leeds V Castleford in 2012 = 16,153
% increase = +5.46%

Hull KR V Huddersfield in 2013 = 6,963
Hull KR V Huddersfield in 2012 = 7,616
% decrease = -8.57%

Widnes v Wigan in 2013 = 6,528
Widnes V Wigan in 2012 = 7,357
% decrease = -11.27%

Well done to Leeds and Castleford fans for proving that beautiful summer rugby weather can be a key factor in establishing an increased attendance. One can only assume that the weather conditions in Hull and Widnes today were arctic in nature.

Your agenda is duly noted

Didn't do too much "destroying" tonight! Better away support than usual from your lot I thought tonight about 150 in the well?

What happened tonight.

It wasn't 10,582, BBC printed Warrington's attendance from that day on the Leeds game by accident.

i can't believe this thread is up to 115 pages.

Were it not for the RFL and it's compliant RL media acolytes conspicuous lack of interest in SL attendances this season, this thread would have died on it's @rse within a day or two of the opening post.

Good job this thread does exist then because SL attendances this season aren't being highlighted and discussed anywhere else.