Attendance thread

[Toby Chopra]

58 minutes ago, Spidey said:

Why should clubs give up home advantage? Moving games to neutral venues always favours the away side

Indeed. Maybe it's the different rugby cultures here and down under, but it always seems right that if teams have qualified top of the table they deserve at least one home game, regardless of the stadium size. 

[Sports Prophet]

3 hours ago, ghost crayfish said:

It's a tricky balance, but there have to be some minimum standards at least. A capacity of 13,000 is not good enough. In my opinion, there should be a minimum capacity of 20k in play for any finals host, and all-Sydney games should be played at one of the big Sydney grounds. All their supporters would be able to access the game anyway, so what's the problem? 

The problem is two fold.

1. The grounds are not reasonably accessible at all. Especially for Cronulla and Manly, and extra especially if on a Friday night.

2. The nearest large stadium for Sharks v Roosters is Roosters home ground. So giving the lower team the advantage or taking the even less accessible choice of Homebush.

In saying that, I kind of agree, but not with half measures. If we are going to exclude the old suburban grounds, then we exclude all of them. Penrith, Brookie, Leichhardt, Campbelltown, Illawarra and Jubilee. It’s just I think we can probably get away with another couple of years consistently making the second and third weeks a really big deal when in Sydney.

Edited September 7, 2023 by Sports Prophet

[Taffy Tiger]

On 04/09/2023 at 20:02, LeytherRob said:

You claimed that no club in SL "can claim the increases Huddersfield have had in the last 25+ years". Let's look at the facts, in the last 25 years/23 seasons(to exclude the 2 covid affected seasons), Huddersfield have an average home attendance of 5,528, about 250 more than the current average this season. 25 years ago in 1998, Huddersfield averaged 5,142 vs 5,262 this year - a 2.3% increase.

 

Looking at  the other clubs in SL, of the 8 clubs that were in SL in 1998 and 2023, only Castlefords(down by 1%) has lower growth than Huddersfield. The biggest being Hull and Warrington which have both more than doubled.

Team 1998 2023    Change Castleford 6777 6694 99% Huddersfield 5142 5262 102% Hull FC 5514 12176 221% Leeds 11754 13772 117% Salford 4819 5102 106% St Helens 7061 12610 179% Warrington 4897 10731 219% Wigan 11294 13205 117%

So the point is, yes many clubs can claim much bigger increases in the last 25 years than Huddersfield, both as a % and numerically.

Hi Leyther Rob , not sure where you got Cas average attendance from. I have over 7.1k

[LeytherRob]

1 hour ago, Taffy Tiger said:

Hi Leyther Rob , not sure where you got Cas average attendance from. I have over 7.1k

all figures were taken from https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/

[Taffy Tiger]

15 minutes ago, LeytherRob said:

all figures were taken from https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/

Hi LR , same site but breakdown of each game https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/seasons/super-league-xxviii-2023/castleford/summary.html

 

Total attendance 85,470

 

total matches 12

 

Average 7,122

 

They have our average home crowd of 6,901 and not 6,694 , but this includes HullFC in CC . The above are our 12 home SL games only

Edited September 7, 2023 by Taffy Tiger

[bobbruce]

42 minutes ago, Taffy Tiger said:

Hi LR , same site but breakdown of each game https://www.rugbyleagueproject.org/seasons/super-league-xxviii-2023/castleford/summary.html

 

Total attendance 85,470

 

total matches 12

 

Average 7,122

 

They have our average home crowd of 6,901 and not 6,694 , but this includes HullFC in CC . The above are our 12 home SL games only

If that’s right it’s a great effort from Cas fans after this years performances. 

[Taffy Tiger]

20 minutes ago, bobbruce said:

If that’s right it’s a great effort from Cas fans after this years performances. 

Agree , although we did get a few bigger crowds at start of season 

[JonNgog]

50,000 sell out in Brisbane earlier.

[JM2010]

48 minutes ago, JonNgog said:

50,000 sell out in Brisbane earlier.

Probably not many away fans either.

[Damien]

7 minutes ago, JM2010 said:

Probably not many away fans either.

Melbourne obviously never contribute anything then to the NRL. Kick them out pronto.

[OnStrike]

Just under 8,000 at Cas last night. Fair play to them

[Roughyed Rats]

On 07/09/2023 at 17:43, Taffy Tiger said:

Agree , although we did get a few bigger crowds at start of season 

Will be interesting to see whether they are at the same level if you are in a similar position next season but without the jeopardy of a relegation battle. 

[Taffy Tiger]

41 minutes ago, Roughyed Rats said:

Will be interesting to see whether they are at the same level if you are in a similar position next season but without the jeopardy of a relegation battle. 

Agree RR , I think the aim will be to try and hit the 7.5k average to get the extra 0.5 points available , although hopefully planning permission will be granted later this year to upgrade the ground , which will reduce capacity and may make a 7.5k average unattainable . Will have to wait and see.

[Josef K]

13,428 at Saints on Friday night, it was a fantastic atmosphere. The crowd was up 316 on the 13,112 that turned up to watch the Toulouse match last season. 

[Gerrumonside ref]

Seemed a very good crowd at Newcastle vs Canberra

[Tommygilf]

Don't want this to go all Cross Code, but what this shows to me is that whilst the current system has seen modest growth in our lower half of the table averages, it has absolutely dented the ability of the top end to grow relative to similar sized competitors. 

Even with the one off inflated figures for certain games, its not like we do those sort of big matches regularly either. 

Instead of kicking on to have our former 15k averaging clubs pushing 20k, and our 10k pushing 15k etc, we seem to have stagnated over the past decade or so to somewhere between 7k to 13k is alright, with 3 or 4 clubs getting even less than that. 

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Josef K said:

13,428 at Saints on Friday night, it was a fantastic atmosphere. The crowd was up 316 on the 13,112 that turned up to watch the Toulouse match last season. 

This isn't a criticism of anyone at all, but I do expect takings were way up on this week's game. While clubs often return a decent attendance number versus the French teams, there are usually very cheap tickets and community schemes for those games - which is entirely right BTW. 

[Toby Chopra]

3 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Don't want this to go all Cross Code, but what this shows to me is that whilst the current system has seen modest growth in our lower half of the table averages, it has absolutely dented the ability of the top end to grow relative to similar sized competitors. 

Even with the one off inflated figures for certain games, its not like we do those sort of big matches regularly either. 

Instead of kicking on to have our former 15k averaging clubs pushing 20k, and our 10k pushing 15k etc, we seem to have stagnated over the past decade or so to somewhere between 7k to 13k is alright, with 3 or 4 clubs getting even less than that. 

I'm probably opening a can of worms here Tommy, but how has the "current system" held back crowds at the top teams? Do you mean salary cap or league structure? (or something else?) Genuinely interested cos I'm not sure how either of those have affected things.

I'd put it more down to a stagnation in the national image/perception of rugby league as a whole, so the biggest games no longer quite have the cachet of major sporting events, as they perhaps once did. But not sure what individual clubs can do about that, it has to be addressed collectively.

[Tommygilf]

Just now, Toby Chopra said:

I'm probably opening a can of worms here Tommy, but how has the "current system" held back crowds at the top teams? Do you mean salary cap or league structure? (or something else?) Genuinely interested cos I'm not sure how either of those have affected things.

I'd put it more down to a stagnation in the national image/perception of rugby league as a whole, so the biggest games no longer quite have the cachet of major sporting events, as they perhaps once did. But not sure what individual clubs can do about that, it has to be addressed collectively.

I think the current system encompasses all that in my interpretation tbh.

I think there has been an underlying mentality of "sustainability" which whilst financially prudent in theory, has neither properly worked (see London, Bradford and Widnes as the headline examples but of course many others), nor has it made any side really push on. Its all a bit boring and without impetus. 

[Damien]

1 minute ago, Toby Chopra said:

I'm probably opening a can of worms here Tommy, but how has the "current system" held back crowds at the top teams? Do you mean salary cap or league structure? (or something else?) Genuinely interested cos I'm not sure how either of those have affected things.

I'd put it more down to a stagnation in the national image/perception of rugby league as a whole, so the biggest games no longer quite have the cachet of major sporting events, as they perhaps once did. But not sure what individual clubs can do about that, it has to be addressed collectively.

But do the things you mention in your first paragraph not lead to the stagnation that you put it down to in your second paragraph? I certainly see the former contributing to the latter.

[Dave T]

3 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Don't want this to go all Cross Code, but what this shows to me is that whilst the current system has seen modest growth in our lower half of the table averages, it has absolutely dented the ability of the top end to grow relative to similar sized competitors. 

Even with the one off inflated figures for certain games, its not like we do those sort of big matches regularly either. 

Instead of kicking on to have our former 15k averaging clubs pushing 20k, and our 10k pushing 15k etc, we seem to have stagnated over the past decade or so to somewhere between 7k to 13k is alright, with 3 or 4 clubs getting even less than that. 

I'm not sure that's the conclusion I'd come to tbh. And I'll start by saying that Social Media account is one of the most annoying around - nobody even claims his first line, so he just talking gash right from the off. 

But what these numbers do show is that even with all the advantages that RU has, huge international game, grassroots size, lot more money, friends in high places, friendly media etc. their numbers are modest. 

In the same way we haven't been able to move into new territories and do well (Yorkshire, Newcastle and Sale) neither have they. 

One of the things it does show is that in many ways, Union do many of the things we'd love to do and have the money we'd love, but it does show that the size of the clubs is probably not going to be huge. 

The bigger issue is the small clubs at the bottom end. 

[Spidey]

When did they go down to 10 teams in the top division? I assume they don’t loop and just have other comps to fill the weeks out?

[Dave T]

1 hour ago, Spidey said:

When did they go down to 10 teams in the top division? I assume they don’t loop and just have other comps to fill the weeks out?

They've had clubs gone bust. Looks like just home and away, but they have a cup comp with group games and then Euro cup comps. 

The lack of euro cup comps in RL is a bit of a problem for us. 

[gingerjon]

2 hours ago, Spidey said:

When did they go down to 10 teams in the top division? I assume they don’t loop and just have other comps to fill the weeks out?

When teams went bust and no clubs in the tier below qualified for promotion *I think*

[Chronicler of Chiswick]

If two top RU sides go bust with gates over 9K (I'm including Worcester here) and the top division ends a season with fewer clubs than it started with, then I'd question which code has the problems.