Tomkins to play for Barbarians?

[highland convert]

If it happened what's the bet Leeds ended up with it as home venue :doz:

[No straw damn us]

I would rather they redevelop Odsal.

[DaveO]

Just a selection of the gates at yesterdays games out of interest:

Harlequins v Newcastle...12,521

Gloucester v Leicester....14,437

London Irish v Wasps.......7,987

Northampton v Saracens 13,402

Unfortunatley RL cant match those imo.

The crowd figures only tell part of the story.

Wasps, Newcastle and Sarries are run at a loss. Northampton made a profit of about £800K last year but they got something like £2 million of the RFU from those RFU profits I mentioned earlier as all clubs do. In other words RU could not sustain itself at club level without those handouts and so it just shows how important the international scene is.

As to the crowd figures themselves Northampton v Sarries is a top of the table clash (4 v 2 as they stand today) so 13,402 is just poor for that.

Also London Irish are 3rd and yet got a crowd smaller than we did for any league game last year. Again not good figures.

The two richest and best supported sides in RU are Quins and Leicester. No surprise they feature in the two games with the largest crowds. That is like us and Leeds but even then, Quins only got 12K on and they are top of the league.

[Kiwiseddon]

I may be wrong here but don't a lot of those clubs sell tickets at very cheap prices, purely to get bums on seats?

[DaveO]

Is the rumour true that the RL is negotiating to have a 50.000 stadium built in Leeds on the old Tetleys brewery site to stage RL matches for Internationals and Cup Finals ,if true our own Twickers

I think the must be just a rumour because if it isn't then it would simply not be big enough for grand finals and CC finals.

There were 78,000 at Wembley and 69,000 at Old Trafford this year so that would be 28K and 19K locked out of a final if we got a 50K stadium.

I see no reason why those crowds could not be bettered either (85K for the CC final and 71K for GF in 2010 for example).

A 50K ground is just too small so come to think of it the RFL will probably do it and chuck away the Wembley tradition of the CC final while they are at it!

Now if they came up with an 80K stadium well maybe. It could them even be hired out to premiership soccer as a neutral ground for big matches and make some money.

[DaveO]

I may be wrong here but don't a lot of those clubs sell tickets at very cheap prices, purely to get bums on seats?

Well Sarries tickets are very expensive which may be why they get around 6K crowds.

At the end of the day I think the points is the crowds are not that big (so not particularly appealing to sponsors) and whatever they charge, clubs losses or profits would be worse or vanish without the RFU handout.

It's pretty amazing when you think about it that RU is mainly sustained in England off the back of Twickers.

[Welski]

It's pretty amazing when you think about it that RU is mainly sustained in England off the back of Twickers.

I think the majority of watchers of both codes will follow a league side (+National RL side on the rare occasions they play) and their National RU team.

The Six Nations is prime time viewing each year and attracts a host of sponsors, this years Four Nations barely registered.

A lesson for RL perhaps, develop the International scene and allow the proceeds to filter down.

[markill]

It's not just a business model, it owes a lot to the history of the game and how this has always been operated, and to the culture within the sport. Same things can be said about cricket as are being said about RU - The income derived from the national team goes a long way to supporting the various levels of domestice competition participants.

But the national teams are the priority - an England RU player won't be expected to play for their club around four nations time unless agreed by RFU, in cricket they have ECB contracts, and players are brought through and developed towards the central aim of making the national team better. The whole structure is traditionally geared that way (changing a bit with Heiniken cup and T20 in respective sports shifting financial priorities).

The structure of RL - and football - isn't the same. Traditionaly (or in my life time at least) the clubs have been the driving force behind what the players do and more money is raised at the domestic game level than the internationals. This again isn't necessarily a 'business model' - the NFL, now that's a business model, and a very successful one at that.

[cpwigan]

Let me see How many pages of

Sam T was never going to get injured playing in such a pantomine. Such scaremongering was nonsense.

Sam T raised his profile. Sam T remains a Wigan player.

Wigan RLFC raised their profile.

I presume (educated speculation) / hope that IL attended to maximise such opportunities commercially.

Union is still a bigger sport in Britain. It probably always will be.

League is / probably always will be a better sport.

IIRC, a very astute individual called Ellery Hanley utilised American Football in a similar vein.

[Dobby]

Just a selection of the gates at yesterdays games out of interest:

Harlequins v Newcastle...12,521

Gloucester v Leicester....14,437

London Irish v Wasps.......7,987

Northampton v Saracens 13,402

Unfortunatley RL cant match those imo.

Following on from my previous posts in response to this, where I said that you had been rather selective in your choice of weeks and matches, I thought that I would post the attendances of the RU games from this weekend:

London Wasps 16 22 Harlequins.. 6,792 (Poor for traditionally big London rivals)

Saracens 15-11 London Irish........ 6,240 (Again very poor for a 2nd v 4th clash)

Leicester 30-25 Northampton....... 24,000 (Good crowd but to be expected from the best supported RU club in a game which is much like a Wigan v Saints clash)

Bath 13-16 Sale......................... 12,040 (Decent crowd but much the same as a Saints or Warrington)

Exeter 15-9 Worcester................ 7,331 (Poor considering Exeter are 3rd in the table)

Newcastle 26-25 Gloucester........ 4,111 (Awful crowd for the visit of a big club)

These are very poor and just shows how much some of the big spending RU clubs are struggling and shows exactly why they are losing fortunes each year. People need not be sucked in by the RU hype that everything is fine and rosy and that clubs get far bigger attendances than Super League clubs. Take out the hyped double headers at Twickenham, where every club adds the full attendance when working out their average, and Saracens losing fortunes at Wembley matches and RU's average attendances would be less than Rugby League's.