koli

Back in the day Oldham had crowds at similar levels to St Helens and Warrington . Widnes somewhat smaller. Suggests that with a successful SL team 10k type possible for Oldham….unless like Huddersfield changing demographics n too long out of the top flight. More recently unsuccessful Widnes SL sides pulled in 6k to 7k .

To be pedantic the CCF was usually the 4th last game of the season followed by Championship/Premiership semis and the Championship/Premiership Final

It was the best final atmosphere wise that I’ve been at for quite a few years.

You could strike at the ptb and more importantly there were contested scrums and a lot of them. Heavier balls,muddy pitches and no substitutions meant that knock ons were a lot more frequent -hence the number of scrums. My dad’s generation would say that the best period ever for attacking rugby was in the ‘50s with wingers like Tommy Voll and Brian Bevan scoring over 50 tries a season.

It’s an important point about governance.Wigan n Warrington arranged a regular round fixture before the fixture list had been set and presented it as a faite accompli. Good idea or not it’s clearly not the way it should be done .

I believe he was Ryan’s uncle.

Last season we only played Cas at home once (twice away) and the crowd was around 11,500

At my age the 90s counts as relatively recent!

A fairly recent phenomena I think following the Lactics getting into the higher divisions n may have a lot to do with relative ease of getting tickets versus the bigger NW clubs. Growing up in the 60s/70s the west side of St Helens followed LFC n EFC while east side MUFC and to a smaller extent BWFC and MCFC. When I was a small boy there were still former St Helens Recs supporters who would support Wigan or Widnes rather than Saints.

If you are in Asia Premier Sports Asia shows all the major rugby comps Union and League Inc SL.

Jonty Pilkington…he’s playing career was over before I was born but meeting him in street in the 60s was a scary experience!

The red hand of Ulster goes back long long before the Williamite Wars.

As was Saints-it was part of a brown field re generation project that included Tesco.

I think we have suffered heavily in the backs from the growing dominance and huge money available in soccer. Talented boys who 50 years ago might have chosen rugby over soccer are less likely to do so today.

In the run up to Saints first try Lomax was hit very late after passing but haven’t seen/heard any comment on that.