does the stadium belong to the WRU?if not they may have very little say in it.

I would be wearing one of those beer-jackets. Always warm after a few of them.

If you need to get the GF winners playing an early game, the best solution would be to get them to play Catalans in Perp the week before. You would still be kicking off the SL in the UK that weekend and this would allow for a fixture that gives Catalans a week off the same week as the England-France mid-season match.

its been said before and worth saying again. if you are going to have it as an opener then you need the millennium stadium as it has a roof.
would it be a bit closer to the six nations time though?

never understood why wembley wasn't built with a roof but thats for another day

According to [url=http://www.wembleystadium.com/brilliantfuture/thenewdesign/keyfeatures.htmthis[/url, Wembley does have a roof...

Surely the idea of having the weekend opener at the Millennium Stadium is to start the season off with a bang, and not have a fixture moved to the start of the season to accommodate the WCC.

It's not difficult to solve really, is it? Move the season a week early and have the WCC on a stand alone weekend. The season opener is an event in it's own right then, and the WCC is also an event that people may want too attend (rather than it interfering with their club's SL fixture that weekend). The RFL seem to have managed to make both of these as small an event as possible the way they've got it!

Wembley does have a retractable roof. It just doesn't shut all the way.

Move it back to Cardiff and have it as the first game, maybe with the WCC being there.

Also bring back the derbies.

Bring in the championship teams on the other pitch which Cardiff RU play on.

Do this and we will easily get 45k on each day, maybe more.

So simple & makes far too much sense.

We need to be careful with the bold predictions. I don't feel we will get an almost 30k increase on previous Cardiff events.

There is no Bank Holiday weekend in Feb, meaning the Sunday would have a lower crowd than normal, and put simply, it's not a great time to go away for a weekend. One of the charms of these events is being able to sit outside and have a drink, sitting inside the dark Millenium Stadium for two days is not going to draw the thousands in.

That said, there are plenty of pro's for this, so it would be interesting to see if they went for it.

Yes it does & with the FAW looking at moving the Euro 2012 qualifiers (except for one) to smaller stadia then they'll be looking for new revenue streams.

If you had the WCC there, then one SL team wouldn't get a game.
Would be a good idea if the league had an odd number of teams, but a big no for the WCC if it was as it is now. Plus, you wouldn't be able to have it as the first game as it would interfere with the Aussie pre-season (which is why it has moved 3 weeks into the season).


Agreed.


As mentioned on another thread, this pitch is used for the teams to warm-up on as they can't use the main field.


I doubt it. I'd be happy with 60k over two days again.

If it goes back to the MS as well, I think they should close the top tier. Would look better to fill up the lower tiers.

Hopefully this will be the end of the Magic Weekend. After the novelyty and the concept of spreading the game to a wider audience had worn off, it had no other raison d'etre.

Poeple criticised it's marketing. Why? What else could it have been billed as?

- The -up-athon in Wales/Scotland
- The mega weekend where you get the grand sum of 2 competition points and naff all else other than bully tankereds and BFH
- Tumbleweed.....

The fact remains thast to have something at a big event, it must be worth something.

Branding the event 'a fun weekend' was all that remained to the organisers marketing team. T

The traditional big day out in RL has, and always will be Wembley and the one that matters is Old Trafford.

Fair point about the WCC. Thats not possible.

Surely they can find somewhere else to warm up! That is not a massive problem.

I wouldn't be happy with that. We get 80k fans for the CC final when only two teams are playing, we are capable of getting more when we have 14 teams.

I completely agree with only selling the top tier when the rest have sold-out.

I also think we should have allocated seating with your own fans to imrpove the atmosphere but have one whole side of the ground for people wanting a good view.

I hope they keep it going-Cardiff with derbies is the answer-The first 2 years were great

Scotland although enjoyable wasnt as good.

It's a pretty large problem! Teams need to warm up properly. Clubs will not go for it if their team is not able to adequately prepare for their first game of the season. Not only is it a risk to the performance of the team, but a risk to the players who could get injured. You'd massively underestimated its importance to pro-sports teams!

With the stadium being in the city centre, there is nowhere else they could warm-up within reasonable distance. The only solution would be to have them warm-up immediately after the previous game finishes, and delaying the kick off for each game to allow for this. How long is it between when a team first enters a field to warm-up and kick off? About 30-45 mins? Could make the event too long.

I'm pretty sure there is a tennis centre very nearby which could be used for warm-ups. For the sake of having a better event I think it's worth finding a way around the problem.

I certainly havn't underestimated the importance of warm-ups, I was a top swimmer before injury. I just originally had dismissed in my mind that they warmed up on this pitch and now would prefer a way around the problem.

You've Got Cardiff Arms Park next door & the Welsh Institute of sport & the indoor facilities at the Swalec Stadium ten minutes walk away.

Which is the pitch they used to warm up during the two times we've held it their

it does

i was watching some engineering show where they closed the roof.

not a bad idea re the champ. teams but does their season start the same time as the SL season.

What would be the point of the Championship clubs being involved ?

We would be expected to do what exactly , travel down to Cardiff to stand outside in the cold in Jan/Feb to watch our team while the SL fans are next door indoors watching their games ?

Do you honestly believe more than a 1,000 would make the trip ?

Some people on here need to start to actually use the grey matter between their ears before starting to type

Having it at the start of the season would be stupid. I for one certainly won't sit there for 6 hours one day and 8 the next. It would be watch Wire then home. Weather is a huge factor. The problem this year was that everybody buggered off after their game as it was freezing. Some saints fans watched their game in the pub opposite the gound this year as they simply couldn't stand it anymore. As starved of rugby I may be in Feb I doubt I could sit in there all day. For 2 days!!!

I dont get why everyone wants this beginning of season. the weather is likely to be lousy and players may not be 100% up to game speed at that point. Having it as Derbies is fine by me but it has to be one of the 2 league games not a 3rd game as that makes it unfair and just rotate who's home game it counts as every year.

… and there's no bank holiday weekend. So if the RFL did have it as a season opener, I'd bet anything you like these boards would be inundated with posts about how outrageous it was of the RFL expecting people to travel to Cardiff and back all in just two days