JonM

The Willow is in Broadwater farm estate in Tottenham.

Dozens of RL fans on the King's cross train here at York- Wigan, Huddersfield, Hull in some numbers, but also seen Saints, Hull KR, Cas and Aussie jerseys.

It's not necessarily the case that it's finding 5k extra new people. I used to be able to round up a selection of friends and family from around London to come along with me. This Saturday, it's just me and my son. If I could be confident people who're only occasional viewers of RL would have a good time, I would persuade them to part with £40 and turn up.

Radio 4 LW being closed down.

Exactly this.

40k tickets sold at £40 is considerably more money than 60k tickets sold for £5. And the problem with selling off remaining tickets for £5 late on is that you discourage people buying them in advance at full price, as we've seen. I doubt the RFL gets a penny from food sales at either Wembley or Spurs. Ticket prices are not the issue. Most people will be spending on more on travel, food and drink than on admission.

Leigh and Huddersfield. Given my record in the previous 15 finals at Wembley, that should pretty much guarantee wins for Fev and Wigan.

It's still a substantially lower number than I've racked up watching Widnes in London

We'd normally have taken at least double that, even with current situation with no head coach etc. The late restrictions on attending the game meant that organised trips were simply cancelled. I didn't go, nor did any of the people I'd normally go with. I think it would've been the 8th (and hopefully the first permanent) home ground I've seen the Eagles play at

The BBC Radio Merseyside presenters seemed to be commentating without proper mics etc, and kept having to move round the ground to try to find somewhere quiet. Pretty much inaudible at times. So I assume there is still further work to be done in terms of media facilities.

I think a point that is often overlooked in these kind of discussions is that Wembley is actually available to hire. It's part of their business model, there's a price list, a standard contract, and the RFL (in the past at least) got some kind of discount. That is not the case for most large football grounds. Big premiership football clubs with annual revenues over the £500 million mark aren't necessarily interested in the small amount of additional revenue that comes from renting out their stadium, or they may find it more lucrative to work with concert promoters etc. Both Spurs and Arsenal have limits in their planning permission on the number of non-football events they can hold per year.

An England game would be a much easier sell than the cup final, but still, it's a cup final, which is celebrating its 125th anniversary this year (not that we appear to have bothered to make much out of that fact). Saracens and/or Harlequins have managed to get sizeable crowds to Wembley. I would suggest that a large majority of the people who go to those games do not attend another professional RU match all season, have never been to the home ground of either club and could not find it on a map. As others have said, we've let it drift so badly over the last decade or so. It used to be the kind of event you could get a bunch of non RL-supporting mates to accompany you to and be confident everyone would enjoy it.

Is it going to be 800 permanently then? As I said on the match thread, it's a pretty poor show to tell people who've taken a day off work that they can't come to the game at such short notice. I appreciate it's mostly not the Eagles' fault, but they do have some responsibility here.

Certainly would've made sense to play an opening fixture that a) wasn't on a Monday night and b) wasn't against a team that would've brought a few hundred fans.

*(Apart from 2020 obviously)

Well, for a start, there were emails telling people that the game was on, and offering to sell them tickets. I've been to every cup final since the return to Wembley in 2007 (*), and on numerous occasions bumped into people I knew from London, Oxford etc. who were not regular RL fans. Last few years, it just seems like the RFL has given up on the idea of trying to actually make more money - more focused on how to share out what money there is. Having said that, prices are higher than previous years, and I haven't seen any discounting or other offers at all, so perhaps the thinking is that it's better to have sold 40K tickets at £40 than 60K tickets at £20.

Really disappointing that the crowd restrictions have been announced so late. I know people who had taken the day off work, but who now won't be able to get a ticket.

I went over to watch Heworth v Woolston at the weekend, a fairly comfortable win (38-4) for the home team with some cracking tries scored. Certainly wasn't all one-way traffic, Woolston had long spells in both halves where they spent periods with the ball on the Heworth line, but they didn't seem unable to create gaps in the defence at any point.

It was over 50K when Catalans were in the final and 62K the following year. I seriously doubt that moving it to Spurs is going to knock 20k off the crowd figure.

Sheffield took a pretty reasonable number when they were in the final. In the context of a 60 000+ crowd, there isn't a big difference between a Championship club taking 1000 fans and one taking 3000.

Vital win for Everton. 6 points from their 16 away games so far, that midweek game at Watford is going to be crucial.

Yes, they badly needed it after their previous 5 results. I wasn't a fan of sacking Sean Dyche, but three wins and a draw for Burnley since then.

Villa aren't entirely out of it if they lose their two games against Burnley.

Based on how the wicket has performed in the first session, it's hard to see spinners getting a bowl anyway.

I watched over thirty minutes of Hants v Lancs on the live stream, and saw 1 run scored, and 0 wickets fall. Gripping stuff.