JWP wrote:Putting the stadiums thing to one side, I'm just not convinced by it at all. As a TV viewer, I found it so difficult to maintain the enthusiasm game after game, I mean, I watched every second of every game, but man alive, I felt like I'd played, really tough. As someone who literally sits in work, and thinks "Great, Castleford v Leeds tonight" on a Friday, I just found it overload, and a bit of a turn off in truth.

As for the standard of rugby, it's weird watching it, I don't know how to explain it, there's something sort of 'testamonial' about it. It doesn't seem real somehow, it normally hurts like hell getting beat, home or away, but somehow this doesn't, I can't explan it really. The atmosphere, it's like your watching Rugby Union 7's on SKY, at Twickenham, when there's patchy support, the odd roar, when a Fijiaan jinks his way through from his own half past the entire Army side.

Difficult to explain, but everything I love about RL gets lost in tranlastion at this somehow.

Rob Wire wrote:That was rugby league showcasing its game to the nation, if you were a major sponsor thinking of getting into rugby league then you would be thinking twice right now as you wouldn`t want your product to be associated with a two thirds empty stadium. Sky did its best to conceal how few people were at the magic weekend with some clever camera work but even they couldn`t hide how few people had turned up.

I wanted the magic weekend to be a success from the moment it started in Cardiff but you have to face upto facts here, the only real winners are the cities that stage the games as Edingburgh made around £10 million from the event and also the RFL who got a few quid in its back pocket.

The image of our game is the most important factor here and it took a massive knock in Edingburgh, if they are going to continue with the magic weekend then they need smaller stadiums to stage the event in as the atmosphere gets lost in a ground thats two thirds empty and its embarrassing to our game to have a stadium so empty for such a major event with the nation watching on and possibly the world if it went out to Australia.

Dave T wrote:The thing is, people are not stupid, they know what this event is. It is a festival, where fans are in and out of the stadium, so people expect to see empty seats. All the sponsors will have been well aware of what crowd to expect, and will no doubt have been pleased with an overall figure of 60k.

This isn't a cup final, it is a unique event, and will always look like this.

Jesus Of Suburbia wrote:Half-empty stadiums or $hitty little tin pot grounds like The Willows and Belle Vue on sky every couple of weeks?