Albeit the FA Cup has, in terms of attendances and prestige has had a similar downturn. Yes, the final is well attended, but knockout rounds aren't, and many PL teams field understrength teams (priority on PL position / European competition).

I agree with an unseeded draw.
The magic of the cup, be it football or rugby league is that the smaller teams have the chance of playing the big teams. Ok, so they may risk running up a big score, but SL teams have big enough squads to make use of.
Big boost to the smaller teams coffers too.

Put the end of season back to Oct 31st

Top 30 pro clubs plus top 2:amateur. split into East and west. round 1 replaces magic and summer bash with 16 west clubs playing at Blackpool and 16 East clubs playing at Newcastle. Unseeded. (solves problem of the 'odd' fixture.) Play for decent prize money.

Further rounds normal CC but let's use the Oct 31 end to allow clubs plenty of rest weeks (and the fans a holiday). These games not being on SKY should be played on traditional weekend afternoons.

London Wembley is an outdated tradition and with folk travelling 4hours by car and coach it's a complete waste of human endeavour. Etihad stadium is having its surrounding redeveloped with hotels and restaurants - 55000 capacity will mean sell outs and a higher ticket price made affordable by easier travel which will give the RFL the revenue they need.


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Giving up Wembley means giving up decades of tradition. A feeble and defeatist idea.

But is it defeatist I love Wembley the old Wembley I have been to the new Wembley loads of time has well it is not has good has old I think time to move it from their with a better date

Really mature.

To clarify, the elitist attitude of some SL fans, you clearly being one, puts people off. Sadly you will never comprehend this such is your apparent arrogance, ignorance is a vicious circle.

no but really...RLFans.com is responsible for low crowds at Wembley






Come on now

I'm not sure that's right, because the Grand Final, which is explicitly Super League focused, often has fans from all the clubs from all the leagues. It's just never recovered from the demolition of the old Empire Stadium, because other concepts grew, such as Magic, and the new Wembley doesn't have the tradition of the old Wembley.

If you move it from Wembley you might as well just scrap it. Since scrapping it now would make us Cup holders for eternity, I'd be okay with that.

That's a fair point but, Football seems to have coped with the upgrade and the FA cup final is still revered in most quarters.
The major difference is that, unlike RL, the FA Cup final is still just about the last act of the football season, whereas, we now focus on the GF.
You could say that the Challenge Cup is now more akin to the old League Cup in football and that too has lost most of it's kudos.

The FA Cup is nowhere near the standard that it once was. Look at the teams most managers put out throughout the tournament, with even smaller clubs prioritising league places, staying up, getting promoted or whatever, and treating the Cup as an inconvenience. The reason why the final still sells out easily is because it's more often than not contested between clubs who have far larger fan bases than any rugby league club. No one sees it as a massive competition or dreams of winning it anymore though.

The FA Cup is skewed by the elitism that comes with finishing in the top 4 of the Premier League and qualification to the Champions League, or at the other end survival in the PL.

The reward for winning the cup, is secondary to those (a few hundred grand plus a Europa League place)

Similarly positioned, the CC now offers little reward compared to SL survival or a GF win, and the weighted draw, coupled with the difference in competitive strengths of squads in and outside SL, means the realistic chance of Championship club ever winning it is minimal.

So, if they wanted to make the CC more engaging and relevant again, they need to somehow address the reward mechanism, to make the victory more meaningful - eg a wildcard entry into the end of season playoffs or something?

I think you would be surprised at the prize money of the semis and finals of the FA Cup
Semi Final runner up £450k
Semi Final wwinner £900k
Final runner up £900k
Final winer £1.8m
These prizes are cumlative too, so win the semi and final and thats an extra £2.7m in to the coffers + all the earlier rounds prizes too which admittedly are much lower

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I like that notion.

That's peanuts compared to £100m for finishing 4th from bottom, and continued existence in the PL though and £1.9m extra for every place they finish above 20th.

[urlhttps://www.totalsportek.com/money/premier-league-prize-money/[/url

Then if you look at the top end, there's a massive difference between financial reward for Champions League versus Europa League too

[urlhttps://www.statista.com/chart/13892/price-money-europa-league-vs-champions-league/[/url

So if they offered a CL place to FA Cup winners, it'd be more notable !

“In addition to England home games [that are NEVER full! and the FA Cup final, the stadium also hosts other major games in English football, including the season-opening FA Community Shield, the League Cup final, the FA Cup semi-finals, the Football League Trophy, the Football League play-offs, the FA Trophy, the FA Vase and the National League play-offs.”

Only the EFL Cup final and FA Cup final ever see a full house out of all those football games at Wembley. Nobody ever comes out with “let’s move the League 2 and League 1 Playoff finals”.

Let’s face it, that’s our level. Only once this decade has the League 1 Playoff Final been bigger than the CC final attendance. Even last year with the 50k Catalans v Wire CC final attendance, there were 26k at the Rotherham v Shrewsbury playoff final.

Okay, this year’s Lg1 playoff final saw a 77k attendance but that was between two big clubs - Sunderland averaged 32000 in the third tier of English football last season, and Charlton used to get home crowds over 75000 between the wars. Both of those clubs’ attendance histories make even Leeds and Wigan rugby league clubs seem like little efforts of sports clubs.

Yet our little efforts of sports clubs still attract 62k-80k to Wembley!

Crowds fluctuate. Spurs got a few 85k crowds at Wembley but also got a few 30k crowds and nobody said a Dicky Bird. Lg1 play off finals have been between 26-77k. The CC final crowds have been between 62-80k apart from last year.

I think that’s just fine!

Leave the CC Final at Wembley, I love my Wembley trips (7 in the last decade) as you never know if it’ll be your last ever one.

Stop messing about with the culture of the game!

The only thing that needs to change is the date. Move it away from the football season. United and Liverpool, two clubs that have a lot of fans in St Helens and Warrington and of St Helens and Warrington who will have gone to the United and Liverpool home games instead of Wembley, were both at home last Saturday. And get back out there to the other SL clubs, lower league clubs, amateur clubs, junior clubs, school teams etc. and have a system in place to get them to the CC final. And don’t have it on a Bank Holiday weekend when loads of people go away.

I know it seems counter-intuitive but would it be better if the CC final was on Sky?

That way it's get a bigger build-up, more advertising and you'd see it on the likes of Sky Sports News throughout the week.

I'm not sure the Challenge Cup final being on BBC actually does anything for the game.

And there's plenty of us in St Helens who can't stand Liverpool in particular and United too. I don't know a single Liverpool 'fan' in the town who goes anywhere near Anfield.

A mate of mine who is a United season ticket holder gave away his ticket for their game on Saturday to go to Wembley with Saints. Not a good day for him either way.

I think the game is in real trouble if we are having to discuss the rejuvenation of the cup? I don’t think SKY are the answers as at least the BBC gives the posability of millions of viewers free to air. No matter what spin you put on it Sky is still a small player with the sports Chanel putting most effort into soccer we are just an afterthought. SKy also shows little respect for the cup by asking Warrington to play Thursday five days after Wembley.

Over 80 quid for a decent seat will not go down well with nuetrals or locals.T hat is the major factor for me its overpricedaswell as travel and accomodation of you dont want an early start or 10 hour round trip.

I had two free tickets but never went.

I would personally prefer the final to tour around the big stadiums, maybe try the grand final at Wembley.

I can see your point, gone are the days when a trip to London was the great highlight it once was. I personally would be happy if I never saw the overpriced blot on the countryside again. Try to make the final an event people would travel to see & make a weekend of Newcastle springs to mind maybe we could have stadiums/cities competing to hold it even take it to France/Spain as long as it’s zero cost to the game?

I thought the BBC coverage was pretty decent - they even avoided putting football updates and even full-time scorers over the coverage, so thumbs up from me.

At least having a foothold on the BBC does keep the game in the public space, we'd be truly forgotten if just on Sky - and I don't think Sky would bother to cover the early rounds (as the online BBC coverage does).

Agree with this. I think we should be more worried about getting 3-5k at league games rather than worry about getting 62k at Wembley. If we focus on getting more fans through the gates in Super League, I'm sure the overall interest would increase across the board.

As I Wire fan, I love my Wembley trips and feel privileged to have had so many recently. I've been to every one since I've been born and I can't understand any fan who wouldn't bother going to see their team play. I hope it never leaves.

If only the RFL owned their own stadium they could develop that was close to the motorway networks so that all supporters could reach the ground without a long journey.

I get your point put that place is a million miles away from being CC Final worthy in these modern times.