According to the S@ints website they have sold "close to 2,000" tickets at close of play this evening, pretty impressive considering they only went on sale yesterday morning! With £5 kiddie tickets hopefully the game will be more affordable for families and will get the attendance it deserves.

Interesting that in Australia they are currently making a big deal about encouraging Manly fans to attend their game against the Cowboys at the weekend, after the same fixture pulled in just 13,972 in the play offs last year. The club has put on free buses to the game for fans, and there is a lot of talk in the papers about Manly fans "not travelling".

I don't think we quite need to go to that extreme, but it would have been good to see the club really push the finals series as 'unmissable'.

Whoa. Don't get sarcy with me. I'm going on Saturday but if there are empty blue seats in the North stand I can understand why.

To play the same team at the same ground twice in two weeks in the play offs will make a mockery of the competition. When the first game is quite important but the second game is really important. You can see why people might prioritise, especially with the expense involved on the back of Wembley and hopefully a trip to Old Trafford.

I can't understand why anyone would turn up during the regular fixtures then miss out when the game actually means something. Bizarre but not just at our club though.

Cost is a main factor. You buy a season ticket at the beginning of a season and you're covered then and don't need to worry about finding the money. Then, when you have to find the money for three games in a month (four if you include Wembley), then some people have to make choices.

I know a lad who is going to a family party on Saturday rather than going to the match. He'll probably see it on TV anyway so he'd not missing out. Win and we've still got one big home game and hopefully a final left. Lose and he's still got one home game and hopefully a big away game to go to.

But how can we promote the finals (or Saturday to be specific) as 'unmissable' when there is a 90% chance that we will see it in two weeks time Dan?

Since the top eight format came into play I've been expecting the 1V4 and 2V3 fixtures to simply repeat themselves two weeks later. Thanks to Huddersfield in 2010 and Leeds last year it hasn't happened yet, but it will at some stage and it will make the format look very flawed when it does.

As they've agreed on sticking with the top 8, we should move to the same playoff system as the NRL uses this year. It gets rid of the stupid clubcall gimmick and 1st round matches cannot repeat until the final as the team that loses moves onto the opposite side of the draw.

When weighing up whether to go to matches or not I usually think 'would I have bitten your hand off for a game like this when we were in the doldrums'. Saints in the playoffs would have been massive not so long ago and I'd like to savour our current success. After all it will go tits up one day and we won't have games like this (hopefully that's a long long time away though).

A really obvious lightbulb just went off in my head. Why don't they bump up the season ticket price a bit and include any potential playoff games in it? I don't think that's the worst idea I've ever had...

play off prices adn stuff are orchestrated and and poop by the RFL, i think.