another poor crowd, 4751 at cas, just over 5000 at hudds, and less than 4000 at salford for a derby game, whats going on with the game

People short of money at a guess.

I thought this thread was going to be 'despite getting thrashed by st helens on friday night and having more injuries than an average a and e department then playing leeds this friday, cas get beat by bottom of the table London!!!' every cloud and that...

4521 at cas.

: 7,843 at Bradford V HKR who usually bring a few isn't a good attendance and those in charge of £$£$£$£ will be concerned.

I think its a concern to all clubs, if budgets have set too high it will impact.

Dont think the games have been that good this season, thats the ones that have been on tv

Goto admit its a poor do! The sport as a whole deserves more support. Every club will be doing there up most to get the gates to rise but can't see it happening.
Rugby league cheaper to watch than most, better to watch than all but the Wendy balls wins!

All 3 will be disappointed with those crowds, although the Salford attendance is their second highest of the season, behind the Wigan fixture.
The Hudds attendance is truly awful, for the top team in the comp, the "recession" is hitting folk pretty hard

Not justifying it in the slightest and would love 10000 giants fans but we have had a double whammy.
The way our lads fell away last year was madness and left a fair few with the opinion they would cherry pick the fixtures rather than get a season ticket
To coincide the season ticket price doubled (after a great offer of of one for 100 pounds), back to where the prices should be at 200 pounds. However with the fans in despair at what was wrong in the camp a lot dropped off.
So watch your side at home on sky with a beer in the warm or pay 24 quid to watch the lads who are expected to drop off by everyone bar the loyal fans.
I will be at all our games with my family and a couple of mates singing and chanting. Tried converting others but the cash just ain't there for mosy

Karl Pilkingtons got one word for you, bull

I blame pricing in the main. Every year the prices go up by an amount way ahead of inflation. It's always a quid, and then another quid, maybe two quid. But every quid is 5%, and before you know where you are, it's a very dear trip.

Our attendances are helped by the season ticket deals, but look where those left Bradford.

I don't agree with the game quality argument, as I think there have been some good ones. And I don't buy the whinge of whoever is the holder of the latest "we won the league leaders shield but didn't win the grand final, it's not fair" badge, that the ordinary season games don't mean anything. If those are only interested in the glory, Headingley is in Leeds. Fill yer boots.

No, I think it is purely down to the price. I brought a mate for the Hull KR game, and I winced when I told him that he would have to cough up £22.

Do me a favour recession or not Huddersfield will still have poor crowds. Plastic club. They hand out plenty of freebies each game top side in competition they have no excuse they are just POOR !

Cas will be lucky to get the 521 there next week.
I never thought I'd say this but....
That's the last bit of money they get from me this season.
I'm sorry, but I cannot be part of paying players/coaches wages, when they've clearly tossed it off all week.
I literally ahve no clue what the game plan was.
Both teams were lack-lustre, but at no point in the game did we intend on playing anything other than one man rugby.
I was absolutely p*****g myself at one point, when we had the ball on London's line, and made a play where we ended up back on the forty.
Would love to see that on youtube with circus music covering it.
I'm officially a normanton fan.

You'll be there when you play Wakey, if only on the off chance that you might sneak a win

trust me, I shall not. Though at least there'll be one promising looking side playing.
As i said, I refuse to help pay the wages of some of the people.
One man in particular....
The man who went on radio after the game and slagged off a 20 year old debutant for the defeat. Never heard anything like it in my life, absolutely disgusting from a man who is full of excuses, when in reality the performance level from 1-17 and coaches was what I'd see at junior level.

I blame franchising. I am sure hand on heart we all really know there are only 3/4 teams with a chance of winning anything, the rest of the clubs are just going through the motions to make up the numbers it what has basically become a meaningless competition.

I think a few more are capable of a cup final, or a play-off run, including us - if we have some luck with injuries etc... - but yes, you're right and particularly so for clubs who are out of the top 8 running.

I used to enjoy games where you knew lower sides would throw everything at better sides because their place depended on it - it added to the unpredictable nature of the sport - which seems to be missing from the game.

RL is a tribal game - put a tribe under threat of extinction and they will fight to the death. Tell them it doesn't matter and they can come back and try again next year and it becomes a pantomime.

P&R is a must!

May as well have ended the thread there!

P&R as an excuse? Why have Wakefield's attendances gone up since P&R was scrapped, even in the last seasons under the old regime?

Huddersfield are an oddity and probably not a reasonable barometer - regardless of Uncle Ken's millions, the people of that borough just don't seem to be inspired by the Giants; I'm not sure how the football team fares, but could it just be that they're primarily a footy town?

I don't agree that P&R is to blame - it's probably got more to do with the financial climate and the tightening of belts that has happened as a result; people will prioritise needs over wants in times of financial difficulty and for most sane people, weekly RL matches fall into the latter category.

Like every other industry, RL needs to develop strategies to ride out the crisis and individual clubs should be doing everything in their power to maximise other revenue streams to compensate for the loss of gates.

I quite like this idea of a two-tier professional league, with promotion between the two. My problem with 2006 wasn't that we'd be relegated, but that we'd never be allowed back up. A season in a lower division would be quite exciting if filled with teams like Cas, Fev, Batley, Halifax, Leigh, and if there was a prize at stake each time.

Pre-franchise, there were even fewer teams with a chance of winning. What about all the years when the question in February was "who's going to win the Grand Final, Bulls or Saints?" It is a lot tighter between the top clubs now, and any one of 8 clubs has a real shot of getting to Old Trafford (I include Hull and Bradford in that). I know we wouldn't have got there last year, but in reality we were the ninth best club, not the eighth, in terms of what was done on the pitch.

The problem with the ideal two-tier set-up is giving the lower division enough TV money to make it fully professional.

Spot on - I've said for a while that the weakness of SL, and the reasoning for Licences, is the lack of depth in the lower leagues. If you could have 10 teams who all tick the box - reasonably - for SL, then you can have a free-exchange of P&R. If SL went to 10 clubs, with 3 of them qualifying for the expanded WCC, then that would eliminate 4 clubs. Their money, split between 10 clubs, would go a long way to keeping them competitive, and allow them to continue to develop young talent. Not saying it is THE answer, but it's an idea.

The crux is that clubs dropping in there would have the chance to get back out.

Having said all that, on what criteria are we working - because as much as we keep working towards a new stadium, both us and Cas have still to dig a foundation, London don't have a home and Odsal is crumbling!

But crumbling in a rather iconic fashion.

You could quite reasonably base it on historical success.

Bring back relegation and promotion I say. But have the championship season finish a month or so before super league this shall give the chance for the promoted club recruiting new players !

The promoted club will recruit all the players let go by the demoted club and become next season's whipping boys. Rinse and repeat each year.

The sport of RL, like it or not, is not sufficiently well resourced to support either a two tier SL, or a return to P&R.