Thought the turnout for Wembley looked shocking especially the saints end .



What do they need to do to get the fans in.



Oh I forgot the fans know they are going to bottle it ?

Lots of reasons - time of year; august bank holiday many families on holiday. Grand final has overtaken CC final as the premier final. Magic weekend has also been added to the calender as a jamboree that all fans get on board, something that used to be reserved for the CC final. Poor marketing and scheduling by the RFL for the rounds.



They are just a few of the reasons i can think off the top of my head. My personal opinion is that the new wembley just does not have the same feel as the old which was an absolute unbelievable stadium and atmosphere. That has not been recreated with the new and is basically Wembley in name only. I thought the millennium stadium was as close as you get to the old wembley in modern times. 70 odd thousand is about where we are at and it would be full house most years.

I get this may not be a popular view and many would prefer to stick it out with Wembley but i find it hard to see us improving too much on the 60 - 70 k crowds we have been getting for a few years now; simply put the Grand Final is the pinnacle now and the days of 80k plus finals are long gone.

What was the actual attendence, upper tiar almost completely empty and other areas 70-80% full at best. Looked less than 60k

60000 or thereabouts was the attendance. Considering saints hadn't been there in a decade it was a poor crowd

It’s the Mickey Mouse cup, nobodies interested in it.

It is the result of the elitism of SL before SL most teams had a chance of winning the cup now it's down to 6 . It's the same in football after the advent of the FA premiership

Don't really agree with that, in the last 10 years, 9 different teams have made Wembley which out of a top flight of 12 isnt bad going. Only Salford, Wakefield and London havent been and they've never been regulars in finals anyway.



Also the underdog has won 4 years in a row, and this years winning margin of just 14 was the biggest for 4 years. I dont think the quality of the final is the issue, its the timings and the marketing.

Yep.

We have to get away from this thinking that the product on the pitch is the only thing that matters.

It needs to be an event, not just another but just more important game.

If you go back to Saints in 2008, there's been six different winners of the Cup in twelve years, with a further three different teams making the final. Compare that to the Grand Final over the same period where there's only been three different winners (one of whom only won it once, so there's two massively dominant teams) with only two others making the final. The Grand Final is absolutely the big one - I'll never try and deny that no matter how many of them we lose - but the Challenge Cup is still far less predictable, and that does (or at least should) add some value.

Last year the Catalans vs Warrington attracted 50,000. So they didn't do too badly last year, considering hat the Cup Final is now shown to be a declining attraction.

Going to Wembley is a bit like a visit to the dentist!

You dont really want to go but you know you have to because your team is in the final.



It is not a pleasant day out.

Depending on where you are from it is an 8 to 10 hour round trip including a stop at a motorway services where you queue for the toilets and get ripped off if you want to buy food of drink.

When you arrive the area surrounding the stadium is scruffy and dirty certainly not a place you would choose to visit.

The stadium itself is fine after you have you have been through security, had your bag searched and empty you pockets then go through a scanner.

There are plenty of outlets in side serving a variety of drinks an food but again expect to get ripped off.

Of course you could make a weekend of it and couple the delights of Wembley with a trip to our nation's capital but you would need to have more money than sense.



The cup is a valued trophy to the fans of the clubs involved but the days of a lot of neutral fans making the journey for an enjoyable day or weekend are long gone.



Basically the "magic" of Wembley has gone, it's now just a big stadium in a scruffy area of a rip-off city

I understand the sentiments behind your post and most of is absolutely right.

However, other sports seem more than capable of filling Wembley and while some round ball fans may not have to travel quite as far, although plenty go longer distances, we are supposed to be celebrating the sport and have a final between the two best cup sides of that season and as a sport, once a year, we should be able to fill the country's major sporting arena.



It never used to be a problem and people generally are better off now than they were 20/30 years ago.



There is little doubt that everything in our sport in now focused towards the GF, which has taken much of the sparkle away from the cup.

But, Wembley is still where it used to be, the area around Wembley is actually improved over recent years and the rip off prices are similar at EVERY major venue in the country.

One thing for sure is that nobody can blame Catalan for the poor attendance and to say that the contest was between the two clubs sitting first and second in the comp, who both like to boast about their support, not to mention the cracking weather etc, there are very few genuine excuses for the attendance.

I agree with the timings and the marketing, the time span between the semi final and the final loses momentum interest. Once you encroach into the football season you lose more interest for fans who support both sports. They have a chance to improve things next year but the things you can't improve is the public transport and the expense of going down there.

I used to live near there in 1970/1971, I can assure you the area has declined a lot since then.

I agree these days some people have more income but people are also better travelled and expect more for there money.

In the 1950s and 1960s a trip to London/Wembley was the most probably the furthest some people had ever travelled.



Realistically we are never going to match the attendances of the FA Cup and League Cup, the NFL games that are played there attract a big crowd but they are a unique event.



Perhaps at my age I'm used to better things but it's not somewhere I'm ever likely to go as neutral fan.