The point about SBW is love him or hate him - the guy is (i) box office and (ii) the most complete athlete (bar Ellery Hanley) that I have seen play the game in the 36 years I have been watching the game.

I would find it hard to believe that none of the 40,000 at Elland Road for that WCC - turned up to watch SBW - certainly after the game those two shoulder charges on Bai and one other Leeds players are still current on You tube today and were well reported at the time.

This is one element where the British game has suffered in terms of having recognisable X Factor marquee players in recent years - the increased NRL salary cap will not help this trend in Super League.

In the 80s/90s there were Hanley, Offiah, Davies, Tait, Gregory, Edwards and Schofield as household names and X factor players - in SL at present we have Tomkins and Roby at that level.. and Burgess and Graham in Australia,

Sports marketing is about selling brands and promoting franchises - it is difficult to sustain this in these economic times when few players have the profile of those previously.

Spot on. He won't get the same level of time and space he enjoyed in Union.....he will be targetted by many opponents, his injury record in League isn't that good and he is 100% motivated by what's best for him. I hope the Kiwis don't pick him unless he proves most of us wrong and does well for the roosters.....and I also reckon he'll be playing Union in France by the time RLWC13 comes around.

I agree in principle, but are there really 160k who attend games, this including the juniors and lower grades?

If you ignore the sometimes outlandish claims of 4,500 travelling away fans, then I reckon there's between 140,000-160,000 ATTENDING fans in the UK.

Rounds 6 and 7 last year saw 133,000 in attendance....8 and 9 nearer 144,000.....add to this the Championships, amateur games, student/age groups etc and I reckon I'm not that far wrong.......there will be a few Thousand fans based in the London area that only attend 1 game a year...when their hometown play the Broncos as well as 'a few more that are fairweather fans, who only attend marquee games....

Surely that’s a fairly low estimate. I think there will be a hell of a lot more who attend a game in any one season.
If you take Leeds for example, averaging around 14/15k, but will get up to 18/19k for some games but about 11k season ticket holders, plus there will be some churn of those over the season. I wouldn’t be surprised if the number was closer to 250/300k different fans will attend at least one game in a season.

Absolutely spot on - well said.