CAN Wembley set a new crowd record for the first Ashes Test at Wembley on Saturday, 25th October?
RL Commercial managing director Rhodri Jones has been bullish about the prospect of a big crowd to see the opening match of this season’s series and I suspect that he is hoping for attendance of around 70,000, which would fall just short of the record for an international match at Wembley, which was set at 73,631 for the World Cup Final in 1992, when Great Britain suffered an agonising 10-6 defeat to Australia.
The two other Ashes Tests are both sold out, and have been for many weeks, so the only way to see the Kangaroos in action if you don’t already have a ticket is to snap up one of the remaining Wembley ones.
But rugby league supporters are noted for generally being pessimistic, both about England’s prospects for the Ashes series and about the prospect of drawing a big crowd to Wembley.
In the issue of League Express dated 8th September we asked our readers, in the weekly readers’ poll, what the size of the crowd might be for the opening Test. We gave five possible responses, ranging from less than 60,000 to a full house of 90,000.
Inevitably the option that won the vote was the one suggesting that the Wembley Test would draw fewer than 60,000. That drew 45.85 percent of the total vote, which was well into four figures.
On the other hand, only 6.58 percent of voters thought that the game would sell out Wembley to its full capacity of around 90,000.
As I write this column in mid-September, around 41,000 tickets have already been sold and RL Commercial seem to think that they can take that figure to at least 60,000.
And if they do, that figure would be historically impressive. It would be the fourth highest crowd drawn for a rugby league international at Wembley.
Apart from the 1972 World Cup Final, there were two other crowds in excess of 60,000.
The first was the World Cup Final in 1995, when 66,540 fans turned up to watch England lose 8-16 to Australia. Three weeks earlier England and Australia started the tournament with England beating Australia 20-16 in front of 41,271, also at Wembley, which I’m sure explains why the attendance for the final attracted around 25,000 more spectators. If England had lost that opening game I suspect that the attendance for the final would have been around 15,000 less than it was.
The second was the attendance of 67,545 for the World Cup semi-final double-header in 2013 when England lost so agonisingly 20-18 to New Zealand, with New Zealand’s Shaun Johnson scoring in the final minute of the game to snatch victory from the hosts.
It was a shattering defeat and the then England coach, Steve McNamara, who featured on a recent edition of the League Express Podcast, made it clear how difficult it was to come to terms with that defeat.
In the other game played on that day, incidentally, Australia defeated Fiji 64-0 and the Kangaroos then went on to defeat the Kiwis 34-2 in the World Cup Final at Old Trafford, which drew a magnificent crowd of 74,468.
Somewhat surprisingly, Wembley wasn’t used for the World Cup in 2022, with the England-Samoa semi-final being played at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium and drawing a relatively disappointing attendance of 40,489.
On this page I’ve listed all the Wembley crowds for England or Great Britain international matches and you can see that they started very modestly indeed, with only 13,946 spectators in 1963 and just 9,874 attending ten years later.
The crowds really took off in 1990, when 54,569 people attended the opening match of that year’s Ashes series and Great Britain registered a thrilling 19-12 victory with a side that was coached by Malcolm Reilly and captained by Ellery Hanley, with Garry Schofield and Andy Gregory as a halfback combination facing Ricky Stuart and Allan Langer. The Aussies were coached by Bob Fulton and captained by Mal Meninga, while current Hull FC coach John Cartwright was in the second row for the Aussies.
But generally speaking, Wembley attendances for international matches haven’t matched those for Challenge Cup Finals.
Having said that, I’m confident that the attendance for the Ashes Wembley Test this year will exceed the 1990 figure, but I’m not sure by how much. There are still lots of seats to sell and it will be interesting to compare the crowd figure with the turnout six days earlier for the NFL game between the Jacksonville Jaguars and LA Rams and the rugby union event seven days later when South Africa faces Japan.
I would hate to see those two games drawing much bigger crowds than the first Ashes Test. We’ll soon find out whether that is what happens.
Wembley Test and World Cup Matches for England and Great Britain:
16 October 1963 GB 2 Australia 28 13,946
3 November 1973 GB 21 Australia 12 9,874
27 October 1990 GB 19 Australia 12 54,569
21 October 1992 World Cup Final GB 6 Australia 10 73,631
16 October 1993 GB 17 NZ 0 36,131
22 October 1994 GB 8 Australia 4 57,034
7 October 1995 England 20 Australia 16 41,271
28 October 1995 WCF England 8 Australia 16 66,540
1 November 1997 GB v Aus SL GB 14 Australia 38 41,135
5 November 2011 4N Wales 0 NZ 36 England 20 Australia 36 42,344
23 November 2013 England 18 NZ 20 67,545
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 513 (October 2025)