5000 new supporters

[wigwar]

Completely agree that the blanket coverage of football in the media is a real problem. Newspapers and TV give the most space to what they think the most people will want to know about, making football infinitely easier to follow than any other sport. In making football the most accessible sport, it automatically becomes the most popular. This gives us a self-perpetuating scenario where football is the most popular, therefore gets all the coverage, therefore remains the most popluar!
The RFL have an ideal opportunity to make some in-roads in to this next year with England out of the European cup and the Rugby League World Cup taking place, England going in to the tournament off the back of a series white-wash against New Zealand.
I won't be holding my breath that they will use this opportunity, but I really hope someone does something - I am sick to death of football being splattered all over the sports pages in the middle of summer when no ball has been kicked for weeks when space could be given to some serious Superleague coverage in the height of our season!

[wigwar]

OK I know we have drifted from the original point slightly, but if to increase rugby league's popularity in Wigan and the surrounding area we need to make it more fashionable, to do this effectively we would need the media on side; to get the media on side it would help to have the RFL pushing it for league as a whole rather than Wigan and other clubs fighting it out on their own.
It doesn't matter how many rugby lessons kids have in school if they are playing it cos they have to. We need the kids to choose to throw a rugby ball round the park rather than kick a footie, and for them to do this it has to be made fashionable by making sure they are getting the news and gossip about RL on a daily basis like they do about football.

[CherryandWhiteandProud]

pieater-alex posted:

I don't think it's about making Rugby "fashionable". From experience, the main problems in (high) schools are:

1) Football has a firm foothold.

And the reason being rugby is less fashionable than football so it goes back to what I said we need to make it fashionable.

There is no use just highlighting these issues and not suggesting anything that we can do to sort it out.

2) We get about 6-8 lessons of rugby per year.

Compared to football which you get....???

How does that compare with other sports?

Is it compulsory to do rugby league at school? At Byrchall it is throughout year 7 , 8 , 9 but in Year 10 and 11 you have the choice.

3) Whenever we can't do what we are supposed to be doing, we do football.

So what does this have to do with increasing our attendances?

4) We can't play rugby at break except for the summer so we play football

Well hence why rugby is not played in the winter this is not really much of a problem tbh and I think you have missed the point.

5) When talking about rugby, not everyone can join in, but everyone has a fair knowledge of football so we talk about football.

This is not an issue for Wigan Warriors this is an issue for the RFL. Football is the top sport we all know that.

Again drifting off the point.

6) Football is made like this due to the media.

See above you are heavily off what we were discussing.

7) The media only care about money, so we get football on T.V 24/7.

8) If you can't talk well about football and you don't watch the main games, some people think your a bit weird.

Practically all your points have nothing to do with what we were debating.

But with all this is making Rugby a lot harder to support and more lads are just going for football. All these reason push people to support football and not rugby. This therefore gets us less people interested, and therefore lowers attendances. Think about it. The little things make up the big picture.

[CherryandWhiteandProud]

pieater-alex posted:
And the reason being rugby is less fashionable than football so it goes back to what I said we need to make it fashionable.

There is no use just highlighting these issues and not suggesting anything that we can do to sort it out.

I do agree with this point though.

[ancientnloyal]

Surely when BBC Sport moves to Salford shortly, rugby leagues influence will grow. Take the MENews for example, if more stories about Salford and Wigan are mentioned in the sports pages, commuters to the BBC will pick up on news that they wouldnt have got in London. They will see even more living in the north west how big rugby league is and what potential it can have... gereate profits for the BBC. Moving out of London is a great opportunity for RL.


Wigan as a club trying to raise their gate by 50% is a very hard task... look at the Blackburn wigan match today, 5,000 rovers fans and 10,000 wigan fans. For apremiership local derby that it attrocious. \Wigan socially and economically is a poor area - look at the mass council estates. How many people can afford season tickets from their giro's or low paid jobs? I know we bang on about st helens and giros etc but wign is an equally poor area in parts. Our ticketsare cheap enough to attract this sort of market. its unviable to lower prices even lower. New market? bolton? how?

[cpwigan]

We cannot lower our tickets any more. If truth be known I believe IL thinks they are too cheap (that was my impression from the fans forum) BUT equally he knows as A/L states, Wigan as a place cannot sustain higher prices.

I do think a lot can be gleaned from the recent Hatton fight in terms of how the media and public psyche can be switched onto something other than football albeit temporarily.

My overiding view is I wonder how many Wiganers watch RL on TV when Wigan RL are playing. Not enough IMO. If TV audiences were greater, if people bought a newspaper partly just to read about League that would create a shift in the public psyche.

Nothing will replace football as the national sport. That is set in stone.

Does anybody not think RL could become an easier game to readily play in schoolyards / PE lessons than it currently is? It needs training games (I can recall a RL version of bulldog that I used to play as a warm up). Whats wrong with having RL passing targets in yards. Conversion corners. Nothing is easy but that does not mean we give up.

[cpwigan]

It can also be played mixed gender

[Fujiman]

Looks a lot better than our web site. The sleeping bag though looks like a body bag

[ancientnloyal]

cpwigan posted:




My overiding view is I wonder how many Wiganers watch RL on TV when Wigan RL are playing. Not enough IMO. If TV audiences were greater, if people bought a newspaper partly just to read about League that would create a shift in the public psyche.

Wigan play friday nights. We are up against Coronation Street, Eastenders and Big Bother. 7/8/9 million viewers. Premiership matches are Sunday afternoons up against songs ofpraise and points of view.

Why not play more live sky matches on sundays perhaps at lunch before a football game or at 2pm before the big 4pm football kickoff? Im sure many will tune in waiting for football but will see the startof.end of RL matches.

[WiganWarrior]

Do they still give free tickets for school kids?

When i was at Cansfield (left 8 years ago now) one of the teachers used to get so many free tickets per game for under 14s or what ever.

Also i dont know if its the same now but when i was at cansfield, we have to do rugby for 12 weeks in year 7,8,9 and could pick in 10 and 11 same as birchall.