HUDDERSFIELD GIANTS are offering cut-price admission in a bid to drive up the attendance for their final game at the Accu Stadium ahead of their move to Dewsbury.
It’s £10 for adults and £5 for Under 17s to watch Saturday’s showdown with Castleford at the 24,000-plus capacity venue.
The Giants’ final game of the season brings down the curtain on 32 years of playing at a ground they now consider too big for their needs.
Huddersfield will head to the FLAIR Stadium, taking control of an extensive and potentially lucrative site from Championship club Dewsbury and launching a £10 million-plus upgrade which includes a new stand and will take the venue to the 8,000 capacity they consider more suitable.
In the long term, the club remain committed to constructing a new ground of around 8,000 capacity in the Huddersfield area.
The Giants played their first match at the then-McAlpine Stadium, which cost around £40 million upon its final completion in 1998, when it opened, initially as a two-sided venue, in August 1994, beating Barrow 50-12 in a second-tier fixture seen by 4,300.
Skipper Neil Flanagan scored the first try at the ground, while Greg Austin and Ian Thomas recorded doubles.
At that time the club had a 20 percent stake in the stadium, with Kirklees Council and Huddersfield Town Football Club, whose prior Leeds Road base the Giants had used since leaving their spiritual home of Fartown two years earlier, each having 40 percent.
Now Town are outright owners of a venue which has staged Rugby League internationals, including World Cup ties, World Club Challenges and Challenge Cup semi-finals.
Huddersfield’s highest attendance at the ground is 15,629 for the 30-10 Super League defeat against Leeds in February 2008.
But this season gates have at times dropped below 4,000, with the Giants hoping the move to Dewsbury will help improve the matchday atmosphere and in turn increase attendance figures.
It’s a far cry from March 1950, when amid the boom years for live sport which followed the Second World War, 32,912 watched the 27-8 league win over Wigan.
Wigan topped the final table from Huddersfield and went on to beat them 20-2 in the Championship Final at Maine Road, the old home of Manchester City Football Club, where 65,065 turned out.