Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 11:18 am  

bewareshadows wrote:

Just looking back through the attendence history.

Throughout the late 80's and 90' a sun 80k attendance was standard.

Even the memorable saints bradford clashes at the start of superleague were 75-78k, for the last fixtures at the old stadium.


It only really crept over the 80k+ figure on the return to Wembley and I wonder how many of those years included the club Wembley seats.

If it hits over 70k it will be a good attendance.

Club Wembley definitely masked the numbers by 10k or so.

But there has definitely been a decline in neutral support, i've attended in 2008, 2013, 2016 and 2017 with Hull, the crowd went down 82k to 68k in that time, 10k is Club Wembley, but theres still another 4/5k who have gone missing. The size of the Hull and Saints/Wigan support felt about the same from memory.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 12:37 pm  

There needs to be some acceptance that when you're talking about an individual club's following, you're talking about clubs in a sport where even the biggest get maybe 15k at absolute best for home games. That's being generous too. For many clubs it's <10k. No club actually has 30k passionate fans, as evidenced by not a single ground in Super League requiring that capacity, and few if any games anywhere being sold out. This isn't a dig at "glory hunters" because without them we might as well play our finals in Huddersfield and no one wants that. What it means though is that if a club does take a 30k following to a final, a large number of them will be casual fans who have little or no interest in going every week. Those people will often not be up for going every single time once they've been before, so that explains the drop off. Wires fans used to slag off Wigan fans for not turning up, taking it for granted etc. We're now in a similar position as we go to our 11th major final since 2009. The fact that we've developed a habit of losing them obviously doesn't help, but that's a separate issue.

To be well attended these finals rely heavily on neutrals, and with so much else going on now - including withing RL with events like Magic - "Wembley weekend" is never going to be the big day out for thousands that it used to be.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:41 pm  

I just hope RHP doesn’t run onto the field during the sport’s showpiece event as the match is being played.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:50 pm  

Warrington by 8. We will choke

[SouthStander.com]

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 1:57 pm  

Saints by plenty.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 2:04 pm  

Least the RFL cannot blame Catalan Dragons for disappointing gate today.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 2:13 pm  

Warrington essentially have no halfbacks.

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 2:14 pm  

What a balls up by Hicks
Why would you chiose not to go to the video?

Maybe those death threats worked

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 2:16 pm  

Unforgivable not to go to the screen

Re: Challenge Cup Final : Sat Aug 24, 2019 2:21 pm  

Awful awful decision from Hicks. I wasn’t sure on first viewing whether he got it down or not but everyone knew it was close. Seemed like Hicks had decided it had gone dead before it actually had.

Brings into question whether Hicks was the right choice for the final. Was he really the best ref so far this year? Every time I’ve seen him he’s been poor.
Was he the best ref? Or was he the ref with a story to tell for the media?