Damien

I do think we've struck lucky too with the match ups since Covid. We've always had Catalans at home and Salford, Hull KR and Leigh fans have all really bought into it with great home and away support which has boosted crowds.

And this is why the mid season internationals were scrapped but in reverse. Players were starting to pick to play for their countries and this would have accelerated if we progressed to 3 mid season internationals, as previous NRL leaders had planned. Pretty hard to sell SOO as the elite when some of the best players are choosing to play internationals instead so lets just scrap them and take away that choice.

20k could be on the cards now:

Sky being unavailable in France is absolutely irrelevant,

That's not true though. Again.

Yes. It was interesting when we did have a proper international game.

This is just all waffle. Your point was the supposed diminishing appeal of international RL resulting in the start of Origin. I have said why this isn't the case, as have others. If you want to move the goalposts then I'll leave you to it. The old interstate competition ran from 1908-1978, SOO certainly was no conscious attempt to replace international RL it was just a tweaking of this.

Your argument was why Origin started, not sure what else to compare other than the state of the game then before and what happened in the first decade.

So 15k has been hit now. Its definitely going to be at least the 2nd largest play off crowd of the last 10 years:

There is certainly an argument that if Catalans are paying then clubs just won't bother with this kind of thing. What may have cost a club very little or nothing, because they do this kind of thing, may now be costing Catalans 30k a game (or whatever sum is decided).

What a team add to SL isn't just a straight how much income do they bring in discussion. Catalans don't bring in any more or less income than any other team when it comes to the TV deal. Sky pay for x amount of SL games a year and they want attractive games at that, or the TV deal goes down as we see. Catalans are a well financed club that gets good crowds, has a competitive team, spends up to the salary cap and attracts star players. They undoubtedly add to SL and make it a more attractive offering. If we had more teams like Catalans then SL would be all the better for it and we daresay would have a better TV deal too.

Make that 14k sold at wigan now

It still has a fair way to go to beat the play off record of 21,790 for Wigan v Saints in 2003.

You had to go spoil what would have been a good post.

Your point was the supposed diminishing appeal of international RL resulting in the start of Origin. International RL got way bigger crowds than the old interstate before Origin started. There was nothing to think that SOO would ever usurp international RL, and if many ducks hadn't aligned in a row it probably wouldn't and would have just had the same outcome. The 1979 Ashes got pretty much the same crowds as the first SOO in 1982. The 1984 Ashes got about the same as the 1984 SOO. Even 1988 only has a few thousand difference between the two over the 3 games. There is zero basis for your argument.

Of course there is an argument to that if they are now in a position to contribute more they should. I don't agree with that, I think it's small time, and think there are better ways to be doing this is its truly needed. Again it just feels like punishing growth and success to me.

I do think there is an element of punishing success here. If Catalans hadn't grown by every metric and hadn't posted financial like they do then I doubt this change would be happening.

I think you see that when the Warriors play away games, the support they often get is phenomenal.

I was referring to the point about if being a huge blow to the series and the appeal of it. No doubt he is a loss to Samoa and if more players pull out it is a far bigger issue than one individual. And that would be a blow to the series and the appeal.

And many people won't even remember who that was. It's one player, it's not the end of the world. Most people don't even follow the NRL that closely.

I don't think it is. Samoa still have plenty of stars and to most people Crichton is no different to anyone else.

Another 1k gone in about half a day:

It'd be a pretty boring league if it didn't happen.

Maguire has a great record of coming in and transforming teams. He did it with Wigan, Souths, NZ and NSW. Wests didn't go as well but there were many more issues at play at that club.

It's clear that isn't the case after 2 seconds of looking. If you want figures for members there are plenty of those knocking about.