Dave T

I think the M word is often misunderstood (not by you), and is a bit of a catch all for all activity. Maybe a better word to use is effort, because I'm not massively seeing it at Wire just now.

On that point, some of the stuff we do, including this, is absolutely fine. We had dancers, mascots, this dragon thing, a band in the concourse, Whizee Rascal, and these things are nice, but we still had poor food offerings, no pyros or anything, no light show, no real effort. No push in advance other than cheap tickets. We can do better. We must do.

The Wire crowd was pretty poor really. I think we have some issues at Wire, the crowds are way down and I see little buzz around to increase that. There was probably a thousand tickets sold last night at a quid or a fiver. It looks like we are running with around 8k as our core base which is a substantial drop. I've been able to go to more games recently and I must admit these first couple just haven't really felt like events, the offering off the pitch is looking a bit tired. I don't want to be too doom and gloom as we are still in a good position, but I'm not sensing that going to Wire on a Friday night is a must attend event.

I worry about Wire's crowd. I bought a ticket in the seats behind the sticks today and the block was almost empty. Hopefully that's because they are all in the other end where a kid for a quid deal is on. Tbh, we don't seem to be doing much, particularly when you look at the way some others are presenting their match day offering.

You said it has never got great attendances. It has. It rarely drops below 13k and has had over 15k. They are outstanding attendances and we would do anything for that kind of crowd now.

What have you seen? I've only watched the tries which don't show the crowd on the camera side.

This isn't true, they usually get over 13k, and have only dropped below 13.2k a very small number of times. The 2014 game you refer to was an all-pay playoff game. The next lowest was over 10k on a Wednesday night. All according to rugby league project

West Stand is open with adults a fiver and up to four kids for a quid each with an adult ticket. But if our starting point was 8k or so for the opener I worry that 10k could still be a struggle. Hopefully they are working hard behind the scenes...

Agreed. That was a bad opener for Wire. The Cas game isn't always a huge draw and it was a Thursday in weather warnings, but an opener really should be getting 3 to 4k more than it did.

That doesn't seem bad for a round that wasn't blessed with outstanding fixtures. It'd be nice to see none of those 4 10k clubs drop below that number now.

My challenge is that they don't, you are just sensitive to it. Attendances are discussed for all clubs, in fact we are discussing this on a 37 page thread called attendances. To suggest that Wakefield get an easy ride is just bang wrong, they get plenty of criticism about their stadium and crowds.

Yes, everyone loves Wakefield.

I understand your frustration Ray, but you seem to be confusing people giving their view with telling Salford fans what they think. That isn't what people are doing at all.

I agree, Wells seems to be viewed very positively.

Yep. The capacity isn't the issue with the new stadium. I understand the challenges that the club face, and why the fans haven't neccessarily taken to it, the design is awful and it looks terrible on TV, location and facilities etc, have been a challenge, there is a cuckoo in the nest and politically and financially there are challenges - the capacity is miles down the list of issues here. Good luck to Salford wherever they end up, the next couple of years could be crucial for the club and its survival.

Indeed, in the last few years they've had a Grand Final and a Challenge Cup Final appearance, if anything they've been unlucky that Covid has prevented them being able to capitalise on it.

None of those things you describe relate to me. I simply disagreed with your point in a respectful manner.

Thinnest skinned bull ever?

People are not stupid. They know a small club when they see them playing in a 5k stadium.

We need to be careful not to overstate the importance of our own personal views. The NRL has done very well as a TV product with far more empty seats than SL has. Your strategy of wanting 5k in 5k grounds instead of 11k in 24k grounds is actually harmful for the game.

We undoubtedly have a few small time owners, Carter for example often comes out with small time stuff and has done about most things for years. However I think the international element of SL is more complicated than that, unfortunately it is often positioned in basic terms of things like away fans, which is just one outcome of going international.

Yeah, I think this is sort of my point. I'm very much enjoying their coverage, and it's amazing to see RL on C4, and they deserve support, but those saying how far ahead of Sky it is are ignoring some rather major issues.

I agree with all of the positivity around C4, seeing their social media and coverage being taken seriously is a real positive, its nice to see adverts and discussion on some of their other shows. But it is wrong for us to bag Sky for some of the things they do. Completely agree about the choice of pundits, but as I highlighted they do do some things well, Carney and Jenna Brooks are professional presenters, and the lead commentators are generally fine, particularly when they have Wilson too. They also have the video analysis and some stats (not enough for my liking personally). Sculthorpe was already being mocked on social media for how many times he said 'erm you know' and people will start to get fed up if he is on more as the goodwill factor dwindles. My genuine view is that Sky need to offload a few pundits, I share much of your view in that area, but they do a lot of good stuff (including advertising the sport and having RL guests on things like Soccer AM etc) and we shouldn't go too critical now because of a new kid on the block. I like what the BBC, C4 and Sky all do, but all of them could improve. My personal opinion is that the BBC deliver the best presentation nowadays, but then they let us down in so many other areas by treating us like a Northern oddity.

I'm not so sure, as I alluded to earlier, I think we are being generous to C4 (which is a very good thing), but if we were to be as critical as we are with Sky we would be criticising Pryce as 2nd commentator and the half time review of play was very clunky, far worse than Sky do with Wells. But they did focus on the ref plenty during the game, criticising him for things like the penalty at the scrum. The positivity is great around C4, but I think we are ott with sky I feel.

They'll be what they'll be. Channel 4 will know that we return 150k on Sky and 750k on BBC. I'm sure these figures are where they hoped/expected. I don't think the selections are necessarily that great, but it's all good.