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Glad you had a great time, Bearman. It's a long-term project, and everyone at the club is working to make it a success. It will be. There were definitely that many there. That's the figure from the gate attendant receipts. Also, with regard to local recruits, bear in mind that Sam Snell (2nd row) now has two tries in two games. That's the kind of raw talent we are unearthing and developing. Really looking forward to welcoming travelling RL fans over coming months. They play such a big part in adding to the event and bringing new local fans up to speed.

Good luck Cornwall. We had a great day there today. The atmosphere was fantastic. The home crowd never shut up ( not sure about the 1400÷, but there was a large game for League 1. So well done to all concerned) They will win a few games BUT they need to find RL players. Low level union players just don't cut it. Being local isn't enough. They have the chance to do something special for RL and I hope they do. Sorry we put a damper on your party, To the Cornwall fans get behind your team, they could be quite special.

Just back from the match, well back to hotel in Plymouth Many good impressions, sitting on the train from Plymouth and hearing the ticket inspector keep repeating change at Truro for Penryn, a good selection of RL shirts on the train and a combination of RL fans and Cornwall meant friendly people. Doubt I have chatted to as many RL fans in a single day before with the journey back similar the ground was better than I expected, slightly ramshackle stand and cover opposite, albeit blocked by tv gantry today. Plenty of grass banking and nice weather in any event Everything well organised for food and drink with no queues. Heard in advance 1000 plus tickets sold but would estimate crowd a bit lower than that For a first match could not have been better organised On the field, I have to admit I am a part time Hurricanes fan so have seen some large home defeats. Cornwall had the ball for almost all of the first five and the visitors scored against the run of play but then one way traffic and 0 40 at half time. Sone players clearly lacked the experience but the score was mostly due to one off mistakes. Second half was level until the last minute. a significant end to end slope may have been a factor Nothing overall but positives and those on the train said they would come again Where players will come from ti improve the team is an issue but the ones they have will get better and there does seem to be an acceptance that victories over West wales and maybe Skolars and hopefully a couple of bonus wins elsewhere will suffice. Long term other factors will influence success, failure and longevity but for today, well done Cornwall ,

Start and finish at Headingley; 7,777 places available. https://athleticsweekly.com/athletics-news/city-to-play-host-to-rob-burrow-leeds-marathon-in-2023-1039955561/

Those who are thinking of group games and adding more games to the season needs to give THEIR head a wobble.

For those not so familiar with the local RU attendances. Worth noting that Cornish Pirates opened their season in 21/22 with 1263 against Richmond and average around 1800 a game. 1500 is a great start!

Don't know the official attendance figure but I do know this was a major success for Cornwall and the game. Really hope the locals come back next week because the club and the players really seem to be committed to making this work. You had to be there today to see how good the event was.

From what I saw this morning, the whole Wests team is abysmal. Why drop him and not others - a standard even worse than the rest?

Just wanted to say i’m impressed with the level of professionalism on Cornwall’s online presence. Their website is as good as any Super League team and probably better than most. I’m often astounded at how bad some Rugby League clubs are online. Even at the top level it can take days for match reports to appear or results to be updated. I’ve just been on the Skolars website and they still have last seasons table up. They might not have the squad yet, but Cornwall are doing all the right things off the field to show that they’re a serious club.

This is a learning curve for Cornwall at the moment. Things will improve

Wests would be 100 times better with Jackson Hastings and Adam Doueihi in tye halves but by the time they get them together the season may be gone.

Completely agree with that. However it'd still be a no for me with group fixtures.

No soundbites, I mean everything I say and do this for a living - maybe just simplified it for this forum, my bad if so. Subscription revenues, which is what memberships are, are the gold standard unit of sale and where you want to nudge all buyers eventually. But they’re not what people first purchase, all new customers for us will start as single games, aside from some existing members’ kids I guess. So they’re not a single panacea if we are to grow audience. They’re just a discounted bundle eh, with unit price exchanged for certainty (and advancing cash flow). You can choose what to put in the bundle, sure. That could include cup games, I’m indifferent to that in theory. But just a couple of thoughts on why you may not: 1) you’re not guaranteed a home cup game so don’t know what size your bundle is, that’s a harder product to communicate; 2) your need to admit you’re choosing to put more product in your bundle for a lower (per unit) fee, surrendering the ability to sell that once-separate product to the same person on top of a bundle (when they’re already showing you they’re happy to buy without it included). We want these top-up revenues. Members are already incentivised to attend cup games through priority sales windows, discounting, bring-a-friend cheap ticket offers and the like. We don’t “make it hard for ourselves”. For the Hull KR match, I had to press 3 clicks on my smartphone app to pay & add the match to my membership QR code. If I can leave my house to go to the game, I can do that… if the idea of leaving my house to attend is sold to me. Rather than give more price away, we should focus on working harder to get more to buy the cup match add-on like this (loads more we could do here), to provide extra revenue not give it away, and at the same time see the positive opportunity of a different, storied event in order to promote these to new fans as well. My guess is clubs front office operations have become very effective at building subscription sales strategies over the last 10 years, which was an important shift the sport needed to make, but alongside this they’ve lost some capability in the different facets required for spot event marketing. It’s a different strategy, requiring different tactics and team skill sets. Being better at both is best, that’s what I’d push for.

Cats v Saints. 8624 Hudds v Hull. 3637 Hull KR v Cas. not given Wakefield v Wigan. 3756 ................ Sheffield v Whitehaven. 150 ............. Bradford v Barrow. 3258 .................... Newcastle v Widnes. 1835 .............. Cornwall v Midlands. 1473 Doncaster v Swinton. 1015 London Skolars v North Wales. 186 Oldham v West Wales. 651 Rochdale v Hunslet 415

Attendance of 1473.

I won't disagree with that. That squad is a ramshackle bunch and Elkie Brooks is probably a better shout than Luke at 7. He is stealing a living.

Yes all their games are on Our League. Home and away I believe.

All figures are comparing five rounds except 2019 club averages which are for the entire season. NZ hurts from home vs on the road figures. After Five Rounds Team 2022 2019 Diff 1 Brisbane 31,090 29,521 5% 2 Paramatta 18,961 18,396 3% 3 Newcastle 16,343 19,055 -14% 4 Penrith 16,225 12,474 30% 5 North Qld 14,811 13,658 8% 6 Sth Sydney 14,789 13,877 7% 7 Melbourne 14,141 14,741 -4% 8 Syd Roost 13,027 15,677 -17% 9 Canterbury 12,305 12,880 -4% 10 Gold Coast 12,244 11,085 10% 11 Canberra 11,605 14,864 -22% 12 Cronulla S 10,642 12,141 -12% 13 Manly 10,297 11,267 -9% 14 St George 10,090 9,813 3% 15 Wests 8,604 13,547 -36% 16 New Zeal 7,085 13,831 -49% Total 692,380 734,112 -6% Avg 14,425 15,294 -6%

Gildart and Thompson have both joined clubs that they may have hoped would be turning a corner, but haven't yet. Let's face it, even the current #1 Kangaroo selection on the wing, Josh Addo-Carr, has been able to do very little at the Bulldogs. Imagine how much he'd be slated on this thread if he was a Brit. Listening to the ABC Grandstand radio commentary this past weekend, the commentator said of Wests that they just don't look like they are enjoying it at all, even when things (however briefly) go well for them.

I thought Luke Thompson had a strong game in a losing team against the Premiers

If im honest I don't care about anywhere else. Me and my grandkids like in the uk. An absolute cesspit where child abusers have seemingly had free reign to abuse. My hometown being a vile example. Abusers hiding behind authorities reluctance to investigate. Senior public figures allowed to perpetrate their offending paedophilia with impunity protected by an organisation too focussed on ratings and image than protecting the innocents. I'd love to know the full story on the N Wales children's home scandal. The uk is rank when it comes to protecting children. I'm not going into any ###### for tat comment with residents of anywhere else. We have our own house to get well and truly in order.

Just mentioned on the introduction to ITV Evening News with a piece to follow.

Super League clubs are never going to vote to lose regular season games to replace them with one or two against lower league opposition, who, in the most part, aren’t as appetising from a commercial view as Super League opposition, even if that game is the second home game that season against that particular opposition. I’m not sure how it works with the Sky contract either with a huge drop in fixtures available to them under the current contract. I think the feelgood factor around Whitehaven and Barrow hosting Saints and Huddersfield was the scarcity of such fixtures, so I’m not sure how manufacturing the draw so that lower league opposition are always at home would go down after the first few years, once the novelty has worn off. I don’t know if you’d still get the away following a few years down the line or the buzz around the lower league club when the draw is guaranteed that they’ll get the same thing twelve months down the line. There’s no easy answer to this. It’s not as simple as reduced ticket prices either, the cup games are generally fairly reasonably priced.

I'll put you down for a bit of sponsorship then Good point about Rob being there for it. Looks like a reasonably challenging course with a climb on to the chevin.

Gets rid of Loop fixtures

He did mention Gtr Manchester in a previous post.

It wasn't that Salop, Andy's heart and soul is in RL, he was first a director of Leigh along with his dad, they didn't see eye to eye with Mr Beaumont and so Andy left did some sponsoring at Leigh East then the opportunity to go to Swinton raised its head so he ended up their as Chairman, we all know the reason he left Swinton, but not to be out on the sidelines of the game he and some fellow ex Swinton Directors parked up in Rochdale, it was the only club he could go to into the vicinity, Oldham was out of the question with Chris Hamilton there, he wouldn't go back to Leigh , Salford had a new consortium take over, so that left Wigan, Saints and Wire not a chance, he still lives in Leigh.

I think Rochdale’s low attendances (compared to the last few seasons) are something to do with a dispute with the football club meaning a massively reduced capacity; but I’m sure someone in the know can elaborate. It’s a shame as I thought Mazey & Co were really going to turn the club around.

A true test as to why the CC attendances are down would be try different things to see what would entice people. Better still, ask them. Cost: Would a much lower ticket price have fans coming out in large numbers? Attitude: Have fans got into the habit of not going to cup games for cost or other reasons and found TV a fine alternative? The product: Is the league the main focus and cup not so relevant, fans not too fussed about it anymore. Once reason(s) are found, solutions can be explored. Have any fan surveys been done on the CC? If RL keeps blindly doing the same thing, they will keep getting the same result or worse.

There’s an Australian half back en-route to Cornwall. Been in a Queensland cup system recently so should add a bit of quality to them.

They will be available to re watch once Our League makes it update their website. You will even have the chance to see the highlights on the website and on Cornwall's youtube page.

I know the Memorial Ground well and (honestly) guessed there were about 1300/1400 in. As it goes, the grass bank below the camera is one of the best places to watch from, and there were plenty there

That's great. They did remember to remove the union crowd calculator algorithm from the gate before counting didn't they?!

I agree with the general principle of your post, but I think there are too many Hollow points and soundbites in it. Let's say Wire went all out and attractes 2k brand new fans to that last cup game vs Wakey. Our crowd would have been 4.5k and they'd have been massively underwhelmed. Now had we included it for members, we'd have had 7 or 8k standard plus 2k new fans making a decent event. Getting a good cup crowd on optimism and playing well is good, but not everyone can be in that position. We have a well established sales process and window where we make the majority of our sales. At Warrington we have probably sold 78k match tickets for the year out of our total expected crowd of 100-130k for the year before the season starts. I don't know why we make it hard for ourselves and try and sell thousands of tickets for games at short notice that are on TV.

I take on board all of your points, but subscription models are here, and valid. I made the point earlier that Netflix don't charge you more for a big premiere. We have made it more expensive for these games (they used to be included or heavily subsidised) and made it easier to sit at home and watch on TV, with more games than ever being shown. Wire get more vs Wakefield in the league than they do versus Wigan in the Cup. That isn't because the Wakefield game is the more attractive event. We can't ignore what is happening in front of us. We have spent decades building up a fan base on subscription models (season tickets spread over direct debits or bought for Christmas) and then we act surprised when those same fans watch on TV instead of getting their wallet out again for a game.

Richard Griffiths , now there was an actor

Lovely day for the first ever home game in Penryn. I'm sure the game will live up to the occasion and the Cornwall first win won't be too long after today

Only brief highlights on the NSWRL website but Harry Rushton looked to have a good game for the Raiders in NSW Cup. He went over to Australia as an edge player but is playing prop now and looks a big unit. This weekend he topped the tackle count, ran for 144 metres and bagged a try and an assist. Hope he gets a chance to play first team at some point this year.

New Series Trailer!

PS. We played Istanbul Dragons, a new team winning 44:34. Certainly some work to do but positive in terms of a new team from Istanbul and of course a win for everyone's favourite Turkish team, Izmir.

Because he's a Pom. Because he's one of the 'dogs leading players. Check out his stats, they're reasonable given he's in a struggling team. He is ranked fifth for Canterbury in NRL Fantasy indicating he is one of their stronger performers.

Not just the 80s mate.... I live in Rotherham..... it was horrific in this sheeithole of a Borough.