Was announced at just under 12k,. Surely that ain't right? Looked like about 8k from my TV screen, maybe my eyes are playing tricks on me.

Season tickets count whether they turn up or not, as its a ticket sold. I was there & would say about 8k too.

Wasn't aware of that!! Seems a bit stupid really. It's definitely not in place at Saints, cause our attendance was announced at 5k and we have nearly double that in season ticket holders!

Yes about 8k for me. Half time Golden Gamble was draw was about £600. I always use that to estimate the real crowd size!

On telly and with that weather. It's not surprising really is it ?

Well i know at least four season ticket holders who decided to give yesterday a miss due to the weather and it being on TV.

Counting people that aren't there seems a bit of a cheat to me. Surely the attendance is the people who attend the game?

The attendance is based on tickets sold rather than tickets used.

Maybe its done for tax reasons? Reporting 8000 when the club have 9-10,000 season ticket holders, 1000 walk-on plus 500+ away fans would seem like cooking the books.

This is why the 5k Saints crowd surprised me. I'm almost certain their season tickets sales were holding up pretty well compared to last year (well more than 5,000), then add walk-on sales and the usual couple of hundred Salford fans.

Saints fiddling the books maybe?

Not really. They just counted the number of people that turned up.

It was blatently obvious that there wasn't 11k on last night though. Surely they should just give the attendance out as it is because gate receipts and people that actually turn up are two totally different things.

Maybe we should give out 2-3000 free tickets to schools on a fortnightly basis and report the full attendance regardless of how many free tickets were used or not.

A poor show in terms of attendance - and as for the weather, some of us managed to drive up from Swindon - I think I should count as two people for that effort!

Even then you know how many have been used and how many haven't so why count them all??

We should just give out 10k freebies and call it a 25k sell out every week.

Its irrelevant as to whether a season ticket holder shows up - the VAT was paid on the ST at the outset, so there is no fiddle in including them in the attendance.

The only time it would become dodgy is when "official" attendance figures are clearly less than what was on - and thats something both Wigan clubs are clearly not guilty of, as they both include freebies and/or STs in their crowd figures!

That's how I understand it as well. We are in the East, a couple of blocks in from the North and the rows behind us were virtually empty right up to the back. Mind you, we had to dig our car out to get here so the bad weather obviously put a lot of folk off. It was as cold as I can remember at a game for a long time.

The season ticket thing is how they do it elsewhere. At Ewood, we have gone from just short of 20k season ticket holders to around 10k in two to three seasons. Because of the continuing shenanigans with Venky's, many season ticket holders are still voting with their feet and not turning up. They are giving the attendance out as around 13k whereas, in reality, it's around the 9k mark.

I thought it was more 6k... South was absolutely empty and massive gaps on the East. I didn't even need to queue for a wee at half time!

Who gives a damn how many people attended they deserve a medal for turning out to watch the Rugby in the conditions we've had over the past few days, and if the clubs want to make a few bob on the back of it good luck to them.

From a personal point of view I wish they'd knock these Saturday night gams on the head.

Reality attendance I was told was just short of 7,000.

To quote an individual on a rival sports message board:

"When crowd figures get you additional league points, then I'll bother - until then laugh all you like - I couldnt give a toss".

Except that on that site, they are very willing to talk crowd figures right now!

The attendances figure announced is the people through the turnstiles. For health & safety reasons they cannot make it up. For example if there was a fire and people needed to be evacuated they need to know exact numbers. Same for if hospitals needing to know how many people were injured in a certain stand or whatever. They would need to alert staff at numbers expected if you know what I mean. In this day and age everything has to be accurate.

Arsenal announce their attendance as the number of people who bought a ticket.

It has nothing to do with H&S, the club will know exactly how many people entered the stadium yesterday.

Lets use common sense here - did it look like 12,000 to you ?

I thought it looked similar to the London game. I don't know what benefit the club get from saying the crowd is larger than it really was! I can understand saying its less but not more.