1. When you need to compare a small town and a small country, it hardly suggests your argument is the strongest.

2. Every week, i go home and away all over the country following my club and also attend most internationals held in this country. Why does that not entitle me to an opinion ??? Are only Leeds, Wigan, Hull, Warrington etc fans allowed an opinion ??? And people say Leeds fans are arrogant.

Why? Are pounds in Wales worth less than pounds in Cas? Are the banks accepting money on the basis of population size?
You are free to hold any opinion you want, and others are free to tell you how illogical, wrong and self-serving it is. Nobody has said you shouldn’t express your opinion, just that your opinion is illogical, wrong and self-serving. And people say Cas Fans are chippy morons.

It is ridiculous, you're right. That's why NO ONE has suggested doing it.
Great strawman argument there. But can you actually argue the real points? Or are you too "dumb" to do that? (Hey, I'm not caing you dumb, just asking

)


Are you suggesting everyone outside the M62 heartlands has an opinion on our sport?
This is why you are closed minded.


What effort? One game in the road and then leaving it is not the strategy anyone is suggesting.

How do you measure interest by the way? You started with crowd figures, but now it's been pointed out to you that the figure was bigger than the Cas home figure, what's your next tactic?

It's weird that the road games seemed to have had reasonable successes in the past (crowd wise) - at least compared to the weaker clubs in the heartlands, yet have been dropped immediately. Are there any figures out there for how much these end up costing? Can't really think why we stopped testing out markets unless we couldn't afford it

the only way to see if there is a genuine interest in on the road games is to limit the tickets of the 2 clubs competing to just 500 each. that way you could then see how many neutrals from the area the game is being played actually turn up. my guess is that you would then see a crowd of about 1500 at a push.

You are right, a game held outside the heartlands between two random heartland teams, where both those teams were limited to 500 tickets each probably wouldn’t be very well attended.

In fact, if you held a game between Cas and Wakefield in Wigan and limited Cas and Wakefield to 500 tickets each it probably wouldn’t be very well attended.

People from outside the heartlands aren't going to come to us so we need to go to them. I think that the best bet is to take games to places such as Leicester, Northampton, Worcester etc. We would be more likely to attract people from RU areas as they would be more likely to appreciate the skills that RL players can show.

The point that CTID doesn't get, is that this idea isn't plonking a game in the middle of nowhere, it's stategically placing games where there is a base interest in RL already (through strong amateur/semi-pro clubs, number of schools playing etc). Places like Bristol, Nottingham, Gloucester, Oxford, Toulouse, Gillingham, Hemel & North London. Even places a little closer to home like Sheffield.

...and not just doing it once, wait 15 years and then expecting something to happen.

I'd try and hit one place three or four times in one year with one fixture each time and allow the interest to build up. A game in April, June and August for example.

But the idea would be to do it in a place where we think there is potential to build a club there, and I don't mean artificially plonking a franchise there like Gateshead. If that's one if the current CC1 clubs then go with it. But a real effort with strategy needs to be made, not hit and hope "see how it goes" one off on the road games of the past.

You got my point entirely wrong. My point is that it is better to repeatedly and methodically expose somewhere to the sport, rather than a casual occasional gesture.

The sport's problem more than anything is surely our relative lack of national exposure. If you live in places like Brum, you're not likely to take an interest in RL unless someone brings it to you, and makes an event of it.

Exactly. Excellent post. I still think some games in a large untapped urban area not too far from the heartland would be worth a go as well, though.