With the our Average gate down by circa 600 I thought I'd have a look for the reason as I was bored on a flight today.
First up though let me say that I've never been a fan of using published gates as a reasoning , when seeing it is such a big thing in the Franchise process it often puzzles me as I'm sure I'm not the only one who has been in Wales or France and seen published gates that are 2 or 3 times the amount of people actually there just as those at Fethestone last night could argue sometimes it goes the other way as well !
However I'll crack on, this isn't scientific and it could be wrong as I haven't spent hours researching it (might have even missed a club fixture out and the maths was done on a bit of paper) but might give a rough idea on where we need to improve.

First figure is last years gate followed by this then the club we played and whether it was plus or minus from 2011's gates.

2011 Gate - 2012 Gate
2,583 Fri / 2,135 Fri :Barrow / Swinton - 448
2,285 Sun / 1,663 Thu : Batley - 622
1,942 Sun / 1,536 Fri : Dewsbury - 406
1,940 Thu / 1837 Fri : Featherstone -103
2525 Thu / 2122 Fri : Halifax - 403
2071 Sun / 1716 Sun : Hunslet - 355
2,633 Sun / 1,645 Thu : Sheffield - 988
3,183 Sun / 1,597 Thu : Widnes / Keighley - 1,586
2,207 Sun / 1,700 Fri : York - 507
2,407 Sat / Not Played : Toulouse - 2,407

Now my figures might be out (got from RFL fans and Sporting Life) but I think it does show a picture of what went wrong.

The controversial Friday v Sunday fixtures saw only 2 fixtures to compare (Dewsbury and York) overall gate of 4,149 for Sunday matches dropped to 3,236 For the Friday games (so we lost 913 fans on those two like for like fixtures), we also saw the 'unpopular'
Thur TV games score bigger gates than Friday night fixtures (Halifax and Featherstone ) 4,465 Thursday dropped to 3,959 For Friday fixtures (So we lost 506 Fans).
In total Friday fixtures lost us 1,419 Fans this season if using those gates mentioned.

On like for like Sunday fixtures we didn't do much better as we lost 355 fans for the visit of Hunslet.
The loss of Widnes was massive and also the loss of Barrow was a big factor as well (lost 1,586 fans for Widnes and 448 for Barrow as these got replaced with Swinton and Keighley - lets not forget though Keighley was another midweek fixture due to prob's fitting it in).
The loss of the Saturday fixture v Toulouse (-2,406 ,why are we not looking at 6pm Saturday ?) was one I'm not sure we got back.
TV fixtures I hope are compensated for as 988 fans not turning up (Sheffield) is a fair old loss.

Looking at the above I think its Swintons turn to play on Fridays next season (the official reason lets not forget was all about the pitch and Swinton getting the choice in before us) as Fridays haven't been a great success if using gates as a pointer.
However losing Widnes and (to a lessor degree Barrow) cost us some local interest games and shunting our big fixtures v Fev and Halifax to Friday didn't seem to work (bizarrely Thursdays was better the year previous).

I suppose its difficult for the club to decide what to do but I'd certainly ensure the big Yorkshire games (if not on TV) v Fev and Halifax are on a Saturday/Sunday to maximise away support and I'd also include all the Cumbrian clubs in that (especially Barrow who brought a great following in the NRC Sunday game), keep Swinton as the 'Derby' bank holiday fixture as one of the Easter fixtures if able and if we are going to put the odd game on a Friday to 'give the players a weekend off' then maybe use Hunslet and Dewsbury as the two fixtures to do that on.

All in all its not great reading (especially as we had slowly built up support over the last 3 seasons) but I'm sure the club said it wanted 2,100 as a average which (even accounting for the drop) we won't have been a million miles off and if you factor in the unexpected CC run I think we are still on a good footing.

Its important though the club continues with its off field efforts and maybe we somehow need to 'brand' the league in the towns of Leigh , Atherton etc as a league Leigh really want to be in and win - you are somehow missing out if your not there, use the beLeighve motto but lets keep the focus on getting back as being the best Championship club on & off the field with perhaps more focus on our players and our league and our cup competiton and concentrate on that as well.

Trevor said we would be playing a least three on Fridays next season as it's what the coach and players want, but not as many as this season

So basically, attendances are down no matter what day we play.

That's. What trevoR said too, let's make sure next season when we play Fax, Fev and Barrow at home it's Sunday they're the ones in our league who ll bring a good following over !

They're likely to be thursday games for tv so tuff luck really.

As for attendances being down...did no one absorb the wingeing and moaning thats gone on on here for the last 12 months about the hike in season ticket prices?

Apart from the Sheffield game which sticks out as an obvious loss from day switching, the rest pretty much avearge each other out and based on one season whose to say the numbers wouldnt have dropped by that much anyway? Also what isnt taken into account here which i think you would have to be involved at the club to find out, is the difference in financial turnover for the games with the lower gates. Which im sure everyone agrees is what the club is more interested in at the moment.

If they have made a gain with corporate deals etc for friiday games then i cant see the friday games going away.

I honestly think one of the issues is to get people more interested reguarly. if for arguments sake the average crowd is 1800, then look at the Leeds game where their was around 6000 on. Take off say 2000 leeds fans then 4000 people turned out for this game. which if people in the town were interested more often surely that would bump gates closer to the 2500 mark.

There couldn't have been 4000 Leigh fans on. Everyone knows Leigh fans won't watch rugby on a Friday night.

Yeah - but be fair - if they'd played the match on Sunday afternoon, it would have been a lock-out!!

The people I've asked why they don't come anymore say why pay good money to watch poor opposition who bring no fans they say games are boring
and are onesided affairs play decent teams like Leeds and fans will turn up as proved in the C Cup this season

Because it wasn't the least bit one-sided against Leeds

Agree Matt. Leigh do not play boring rugby these days.

Here I go again but sadly I think it is because of licenscing' fans now consider all Championship matches to be friendlies. I say all but i should have said except diehard fans.

A major factor in my opinion too, yet we really do need to look at why Featherstone gates have increased by 38% (except in 'shared gate' games, that is

) and Halifax's have gone up too.

Maybe just ask them do they want RL club in Leigh. Unfortunately that is the reality.

Did anyone notice the big blue mini bus at post office road , the one their community dept use!
Is it not a coincidence our attendances Down in the first year we've had no community dept!

I believe we (as a club) should seriously contemplate why Featherstone have bucked what we think is a downward trend, by increasing their attendances dramatically.

I read on earlier post about Fev bucking the trend, I read with interest also Halifax. So does that mean if a team plays good rugby in Champ 1 like Fev and Halifax they will maintain possibly grow their gates like these two clubs have.

The real issue for us was changing our matchday from Sunday to Friday nights as can been seen in the figures posted. In business when you are in financial trouble you never risk a solid revenue stream as our club did, neither Fax or Fev did that and look at their result!

I think having Fridays nights in again next season will deter many people from buying season tickets, remember we lost 350 st holders last season and its going to really hard to get them back. I read earlier what was the financial impact to loosing them, even a board member said the finaces weren't any different? What would have been the result if we had kept them?

Lets not kid ourselves the clubs priority has to be attracting new and bringing back supporters we have lost and that is not going to be easy.

At one of the first fans forums we were told that the budget just to break even we had to average 1800 supporters 2000 to pay a small amount of the debt back, if we had 2200 with good cup and play off runs we would make a massive hole if not pay the debt off.

Then why at the last fans forum do we learn the debt has increased from £60K to £90k and on top of that we are struggling to pay a £9k tax bill! (I hear this might of recently been paid)

I know we have a excellent set of die hard fans many like me on this site. If we want to see the kind of rugby and team PR has turned out this season and to grow and develop the club its not going to be anywhere like enough with just the support of our core fans.

End of last season we virtually died and hats off to a lot of people they dug deep and the (club) phoenix rose once again. That gives us a great foundation to build from we cant look back as that changes nothing its the future we all have to work on.

We have the makings of a great team managed and led by a coaching staff that has brought confidence, inspiration and excellent attitude, a winning attitude to the club. Our facilities are 1st class so for me our priorities have to be as follows:-

1. Bringing back once loyal fans to the club, use the stall on the market as the platform to work from, build a supporters data base to inform everybody about whats happening at the club, promote fixtures etc, get posters up around the town, shop windows and pubs etc, do leaflet drops asking for peoples details (do a draw for a shirt or signed ball or free tickets in exchange for peoples info) Ask business to put a link on their web sites that takes them to the club site. Anything that will attract and bring supporters old and new to the club.

3. Set a realistic and acheivable budget, for years we have been too over optimistic like last season with the attendances. Go back to basics, manage and do what we know works.

4. Work on sponsership ie keep hold of what we have with a plan to attract small, medium and large business to support us. This will take time but we have to start somewhere and I think this is what Richie Blackmore is doing so it will be interesting to hear how that is coming along as in KF statement from the last fans forum.

More fans + sponsership = more money to maintain, build and develop our excellent club!

I think as much as moving games to Friday, it's been the inconsistency with what day we play that is the problem. With Thursday, Friday and Sunday all featuring it's difficult for a lot of people to be available for all the games, and difficult for the occasional fan to even know when we're playing.

We've also not done community work, kids are the future!

Ryan would make an excellent representative for a community dept .

We are getting a new community department. The last one failed miserably to do what it was supposed to do and was driven more on trying to win awards rather than engage with the community in the interests of Leigh centurions.

We never did any 'real' community work, we went to the same schools with the same offers that took money out of the club because they ended up with folk who would have been paying full price anyway.

We need to excite the kids to want to come, that means a big name player they can associate with and a kid free with adult deal that is on all season, with the JC's as the glue holding things together

So our new plan to employ 18 year olds do it and link with wigan will work, why would Wigan help us compete for fans they could have! Don't make me laugh, conflict of interest !

You've just suggested using young Ryan????

We need to have players employed by the community dept we get an allowance off the salary cap for this .
Ryann Brierley would do an excellent job IMHO parky pig too working in the community .
They didn't even apply for community club of the year , they didn't know anything of it till it was awarded. In fact it was the community dept contribution to our SL bid that won them the award.

Ryan is 20 btw

He's not an academy player