Seriously how much income do you think St Helens Town are going to generate? It goes back to quite a few years ago when Stains sold the football club's ground, all here - [urlhttp://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/blog/2007/aug/01/saintsshowlittlecharityfor[/url

A number of points:

1. Our crowds have been slowly increasing over the last 10 years. The overall trend is clear, although it is a bit erratic from year to year. There's no reason to think that attendances have peaked. Our marketing can still get sharper. And don't forget, we've retained Sam for next season, he will be a big draw.

2. If you want to get an average attendance of 17,000 (a modest ambition since we had an average attendance of over 16,000 last season) you need a ground capacity bigger than 18,000. You just aren't going to fill the ground every game - many clubs bring hardly any fans to the DW (most of the Yorkshire clubs these days) and let's face it, it's always going to be a struggle to get 15,000 fans to watch Wigan v Salford or Wigan v London.

3. As I said, we only need a 10% increase in attendance compared with this year's fixture to hit 18,000 for the Leeds game. The Leeds turnout was desperately low, at the time Leeds fans were boo-ing their coach and team and it wouldn't have looked a particularly appetising fixture to the casual Wigan fan I would suspect. I'd be surprised if IL wasn't planning for a bigger crowd in his 2012 business plan.

Stains have had the revenue already as shown above. I hope the business plan wasn't based on St Helens Town generating much income.

Income is income regardless of how much as long as its going into the club.

What is it with Wigan fans just because other clubs Like Warrington and Saints build their own grounds they have to slag them off for pety little things.
I'm sure deep down you would prefer your own ground whatever it looks like or who you get rent of.

If the income doesn't cover the costs of opening the stadium then it's not really worth bothering - as stated the club have already had their pound of flesh, many years ago. Seems like some people are getting a bit defensive about having to have the pitch messed up by a bunch of non-league cloggers.

I'm not arguing that our average attendances aren't growing, All im trying to say is that if we where in the position st helens are in, I'd be more than happy with the stadium they've got, Likewise had we moved from central park and had our own stadium built, something like what they have would have been more than adequate, especially with the possibility of being able to extend when/if the average attendances do grow. We are very lucky in being able to play at the DW. But had we needed to build our own purpose built ground, from a business point of view. We wouldn't be paying however extra million it would cost to have a 25.000 seater stadium for the sake of 3 matches a year.

as for point 2, why do you need a ground bigger than 18,000 to get an average of 17,000? the only reason things are like that at the moment is because 25,000 people will turn up for wigan v saints and then half that amount will turn up to watch against lower league sides, The marketing team should focus on making the match day experience so great that those fans will want to come to most if not every match rather than 2 or 3 big home games a year.

You must be bored. Or obsessed! I can't decide which.

Now have a little think. McManus was a big cheese at HSBC over there in Asia. He has led Saints from the brink of administration to the glory of owning a brand new stadium. Do you seriously think such a bloke, with millions to his name, is going to create a business plan that has anything remotely to do with a little pub soccer team? Nah. I thought not!

Just think of one word: Tesco!

There, you have your answer - for the likes of Wigan/Leeds Andy anyway.

Whoooooooooooooosh! You never disappoint.



Makes you wonder why the club are letting a pub team spoil the shiny new stadium - the clue's in the article I linked to by the way.

Glad to be of service.



And don't forget, as I said to you on the Saints board, I'm sure Saints will let Wigan play at their stadium, for a fee, should they find themselves homeless in the future.

You'll need to make sure it's ok with the football team you share the ground with first.

Good thing is with tesco they built our stadiums and knocked down wigans and left them with nothing.

Well, let's just get this bit clarified. They didn't build our stadiums. Their presence meant that the sites on which our stadiums were built could be developed.

I don't want Wigan/Leeds Andy accusing us of sharing our stadiums with Tesco!

they built wires

Only smaller. Must be one of their 'Tesco Express Stadiums'.

They're a lovely little supermarket, but they're not Tesco Extra are they?

Re point 1 - I disagree. Saints have had crowds of c10k for the last decade and have built a stadium with a capacity 80% bigger. Wigans crowds were probably 14k in the early-mid 90s, and 25K is c80% bigger than 14k.

Re point 2 - it's just the maths - if you get crowds of 13/14k for the likes of Wakey, London etc these really pull the average down if your big matches are capped at 18k.

I don't argue that , and as I stated, do the marketing to get more people into those games..which should be the target, and we wouldn't be relying on 2 or 3 big crowds a year to get the average up. then it wont matter if our attendance is capped at 18,000 because we'd be getting those larger crowds in every week. I'm sure most fans would rather be in an 18,000 standing and seating stadium that is nearer full every week with a great atmosphere, than a half empty DW stadium. I know I would anyway.

Yes, but where this wouldn't work is that, if you generate a large (16k+) crowd for every game, when you do play Saints/Wire you have to either drastically reduce the number of away tickets available, or turn home fans away in order to accomodate away crowds. Either way, you're turning away income.

Plus, it will always be the case that you get bigger crowds for some matches than others. If you increase the overall support to 18k, but that fills the ground, you then can't take advantage of the potential increase for the 'big' matches.

It's all hypothetical anyway, we're staying at the DW. Personally, I'd love our own, RL only, with terracing, ground but it ain't happening anytime soon.

In the meantime, I'll look forward to visiting Langtree Park - looks great & should be a cracking atmosphere.

Me too. Already done a reccy and found a watering hole within 5 minutes walk to the away end.

Finally somebody with their priorities in order. These are the facilities which are all important

There's plenty of ale-houses right near the train station, don't worry about that

Hope its not The Queens Arms at Fingerpost Brian -icon_smile.gif

Conny club Paul.

That's my local Rogues.

Dave, the steward is planning on putting food on on matchdays and he is in talks to serve the new Saints beer too!

B.