JonM

Announced as 2069.

Absolutely torrential at York, still quite a breeze too.

Championship figures from today: Barrow v Newcastle 1744 Dewsbury v Sheffield E 846 Halifax v Widnes 2046 London v Whitehaven 1411 Workington Town v Fev 1007 Can't see a figure for Batley v York.

5248 isn't bad, given the apparent lack of much promotion of the game. Problem is they got thrashed by a team who most people expect to be in the bottom half of the table. Hard to attract a new audience when you lose every week.

14135 at Headingley today.

Yorkshire Evening Post says Castleford-Salford was a sell-out, 10 500 capacity attendance. https://www.yorkshireeveningpost.co.uk/sport/rugby-league/reds-stun-tigers-to-ruin-radfords-debut-3565357

Yep, 9044.

Toulouse president says he's hoping for a 6000 average attendance this season, with 14-15 000 for the game with Catalans. They've sold approaching 700 season tickets, but he expects that number to keep going up.

You can't say anything negative about Doom Bar, Eddie. They're sponsoring Cornwall RLFC

17160 across the 7 championship clubs, slightly higher than the opening week. Not bad to average not far off 2500 after each club has had one home game, only Newcastle below the 1000 mark.

3623

Seen figures of 1200-1500 bandied about by Workington fans elsewhere, which seems a couple of hundred up on what they were getting last year. Makes roughly 16.5K total for the round, which is encouraging.

I think that's a bit harsh. He's a pretty solid tackler, you didn't often see him miss one-on-one when playing in the pack or at centre for Skolars. If you look at the highlights here, the problem for most of the tries scored on that wing is that the Broncos defence ends up outnumbered out wide. Juma is then left trying to defend two players. It's the structure on that side that needs some work. Look at how often Jordan Williams ends up marking no-one in some of these attacks. https://widnesvikings.co.uk/london-broncos-a-highlights

Suspect I can guess the answer to this, but was there any attempt to do anything to encourage the Wimbledon FC fans watching for the first time? Squad pen pictures, introduction to the rules, that kind of thing?

I was pretty sceptical beforehand, but it's the best venue they've played at this century - would be absolutely perfect for SL if there was a way to get a winning team on the pitch. The design of the stadium meant there was a proper atmosphere even for a game that wasn't massively competitive, and there's plenty of space and facilities for fanzone type stuff and entertainment. For a last roll of the dice, it looks like a good choice.

2182 is higher than their average crowd in Superleague in 2019. ( For comparison, 1133 watched a game against Salford, 1205 a game against Wakefield, 1419 against Huddersfield, 1503 against Hull KR).

As a Widnes fan who has watched a lot of Skolars games over the last few years, this is the first time in a couple of decades I'm expecting us to go to the Broncos and win. That looks like a squad that is going to struggle in the Championship. Home advantage should get you a few wins I guess. Quick scroll through the ticketing site - there's currently 371 seats sold in the away stand, and I know a lot of Widnes fans bought seats before the away stand ticketing was made available. Looks to be getting on for 1500 seats sold in the West Stand too. That's pretty encouraging.

It's the classic 'towns which historically were in Lancashire, and still are according to old blokes who attach too much significance to such things, but are now in formerly adjacent counties which existed previously but with very different boundaries' derby. I can't wait.

Yes, it's hard to blame the county championship for England's problems when most of the squad barely play in it.

ECB to appoint Novak Djokovic as England batting coach. He has no previous cricket experience, but it still took the Aussies more than a week to get him out.

Meh. I'm OK with the players drinking together at the end of a tough tour. Although drinking with Nathan Lyon might have been a step too far. This is just media muckraking.

The choice between Wigan and a small town IN Wigan was interesting. Toronto or Vancouver

The year that Liverpool won the league and Widnes won the league in the late 70s, there was an "It's a knockout" type event with the players from both squads taking part, I think as part of a joint testimonial. Unimaginable that something like that would happen today, such is the gulf.

The locals speak better English in Geneva too. Leigh or Toronto?

Talkin tarn looks very nice. There's quite a big hole in the north pennines/ yorkshire dales/ south lakeland in terms of parkrun coverage.