Yes you can and both home and away fans do.

I havent suggested we should

What I have suggested is that all fans are important , and every effort should be made to encourage away fans to travel , as they add to the atmosphere at games , which in turn encourages home fans to turn up in larger numbers

Others on this thread may have suggested that away fan numbers should in some way count towards a clubs SL potential , I have not

That's where the discussion had headed, I assumed you were referring to that too. Considering you responded to my point on that very issue, I think it is you who were struggling to grasp the concept

Dont ' assume '


As benny hill used to say

" Rissen wiww you "

, Got me unders and overs mixed up

So you think if a franchise point were available the clubs would make no effort to simplify the process of buying your ticket reliably and in good time from the club? That's not really a difficult problem to solve is it?

Would it be impossible, if this were not a hypothetical discussion, for each club to dedicate certain turnstiles to away suporters so that each club could submit independent away support figures?

I'm struggling to think why you thought this might be difficult.

Because that will never happen.
Take the St Helens example, I go in at one end of the ground (the Saints end) and walk round once in the ground and hundreds do the same depending on where you park. All this dedicated turnstyle lark is silly, at the wire ground there might be 300 wire fans and 3200 Saints fans, are they going to only allow saints to walk through half the turnstyles? but what happen if, like at wire/wigan, loads of wire fans end up in the away end when it wasnt expected, are they going to make certain fans queue up for ages because they're only allowed through certain turnstyles. What about those away fans that prefer a side on view, and there's usually a few at places like wrexham for the same price, how do we count them?

I'd never buy from the club shop because, like a hell of a lot of people, I can't be bothered, offer me a fiver off (aint gonna happen) and I might consider it

What a silly idea, really.

If you don't want it to work, it won't work. If there is no incentive to make it work it won't work. None of what you said is insurmountable at all.

What we need to do is start from some common ground. Can we agree that:

Any given crowd is made up of home and away supporters?
To increase the crowd size either home support needs to increase or away support needs to increase or both need to increase.?
Higher crowds equates to higher revenues and a more enjoyable experience for all supporters and both are desirable outcomes?

I agree completely.
But there's certain stadiums where this just won't work.

I'd much rather see, like Wire did for Crusaders last week and im sure others have done, cheap tickets offered for certain games to encourage supporters to travel. You could get match ticket and coach travel from the Crusaders exclusively for £18 last week and look at the crowd figure as Crusaders brought more than many SL teams. A similar thing was in operation for the Quins game and will be for the Salford game, some would argue a club loses money, I would argue for Warrington to have an 11,500 average after 3 games, 2 of which were quins and Cru, this system is the way forward.

Again, rather than making it the responsibility of the away team with a franchise point, I'd rather put the ball back in the Home teams court. If they want a full away end, there's the way to go, the supporters WILL travel, some of these wrexham blokes had seen maybe 3 league games in their life, but I wouldnt punish a club on it's away fans when it depends on so so many factors

We have managed to put a man on the moon, we have mobile phones bouncing signals off satelites, we can invent such technological marvels as the internet and World Wide Web. Surely it is not beyond the wit of man to figure out which are the away fans and which are the home fans.

I don't actually believe that there is much the home side can do to encourage away fans. I support Hull KR and our ground is often put forward as a major reason why away fans won't travel. But away fans don't travel in significantly more numbers to the KC a modern, covered, all seating stadium with excellent views everywhere.

The reason I say the onus should be on the away team to increase travelling numbers is that the away team has a big advantage. They know who their fans are and can consequently communicate more easily and directly with them, and they are the ones who will be rewarded with a franchise point, not the home team. As a fan of the away team I could feel that I am doing my bit to help with the franchise bid by travelling to watch my team. As it is, travelling rewards competitors in the franchise process, that's contrary to maximising crowds surely?

This way, each club would be rewarded for maximising their own support home and away, and every club would benefit from increased revenue. That's a win win.

You travel to support your team Bill, not because of 'franchise points'.

Agreed for some supporters, but mostly they don't travel at all. For some this may encourage going away a few times or a few more times (than they already do) a year although the main reason to travel (for those that don't) would likely be down to intiatives run by the club to encourage greater travelling numbers, not, admittedly, the franchise point. Again, as it stands travelling supporters are enhancing rival franchise bids (in some small way), that doesn't make sense. How should me supporting my team actually be potentially detrimental to my club's SL status?

Furthermore, if away support was accurately identified, then by default home support is accurately identified. There could then be a clear measure of a clubs success in increasing and retaing its own support, not benefiting by occasional influxes of away supporters.

As a further note, it would still be in the interests of the home club to ensure that away supporters are well catered for, that would not change. There is little point in getting increased supporters one year only for them to have such a miserable experience that no amount of cajoling will get them there the next.

I think if people cared enough to travel soleley because of 'franchise points', they would probably have travelled anyway. I hope all clubs can increase travelling support, but a greater home support will have a knock-on effect on this anyway and that should be every club's priority, not relying on away fans.

No, you've not read my post properly, even before I edited it. The main reason more supporters would travel is because their club incentivises them to. The franchise point would I agree be an unlikely reason, in isolation, to travel.

Good, we agree then

You've kind of missed my point before. The away club can't really do a lot for example if the home club isn't 'game'. A club can't really lay on incentives for another clubs ground. I think it would be a lot better if clubs worked together to encourage fans to travel, e.g. special offers.
The best offer yet imo was the joint decision of all SL clubs to allow junior ST holders to travel for free. I genuinely noticed a HUGE improvement in away following once this happened.
Basically what I'm getting at is if a home club encourages people to travel they will, and that then reflects on the home club, the only way you could track that is results on the day but if clubs work together, like wrexham and the wire did, the results are there to see.
KR don't get a lot of away fans, not because for example my club Wire don't travel, but imo because of what KR offer an away supporter. Where your argument then comes in is flawed because as a Wire supporter its hard travelling 150 miles (not actually sure on the distance) across the M62 on a friday night to the KC (your example used), if played on a sunday afternoon imo you'd have a huge difference in numbers compared to KR, my opinion of course.
I think it's up to a home club to encourage people to travel, we may agree to disagree on this point but at a lot of grounds it would be very hard to accurately check, as discussed before.

We're actually not too far apart on our thinking, all I'm doing is adding an incentive for the away club also to ecourage fans to travel and in doing so aligning the incentive with rewards. At the moment if Wire (for example) took an extra 1000 fans away with them in what way would they benefit? Well they would get some small income from fans that bought tickets through the club, maybe £2/3000? The home team however gets tens of thousands of pounds in income (a boost to their turnover and solvency based franchise points) aswell as a boost to their average crowd size (over 10,000 and over 40% capacity based franchise points). That gives no realistic benefit to Wire for independantly running a campaign to increase travelling support.

You're right there is much more that SL as a whole could do, like the free entry for junior ST holders, that benefit the game as a whole. If what I propose were taken up (as if

) I think there would be lots more reciprocal arragements between clubs in order to encourage more travelling support.

You just can't judge away support fairly for a franchise point. There are too many mitigating circumstances.

Distance from ground, quality of the ground, price of the ground, percentage of home fans.

You can't sell tickets "cheaper to away fans" at most grounds. What's to stop home fans buying them?

Hence why I suggested the incentive is best done in the ' Travel ' aspect of attending away matches

This is exactly what I was trying to get at really.
The 10% the clubs keep is fair but that still doesnt encourage me for example to buy from the shop, it'd too far out of my way in a day but realistically it's the only fair way you COULD judge it

Non of those "mitigating circumstances" make any difference at all to the ability to count away support with a reasonable degree of accuracy. Actually I'm surprised that clubs do not do this anyway. The proportion of any given crowd made up by ST holders, pay on the day own supporters and away supporters would seem to be pretty useful information in running the business.

I never mentioned selling tickets "cheaper to away fans".

Anyway, without getting into the minutiae of a hypothetical argument I'm saying that incentivising clubs to encourage more of their own travelling support is a good thing and to me easily as valid as the 40% of capacity for attendance. The "mitigating circumstances" around that franchise point don't seem to bother you too much e.g. Distance from ground, quality of the ground, price of the ground, percentage of home fans...SIZE of ground.

I dont like the 40% rule tbh, think its daft

To be fair Away support should not be counted on the franchise, I go watching Widnes all over the country because i want to watch them play, not because it may gain us some brownie points with the RFL.

On the Subject of the 16 clubs issue. For me the RFL need to step away from making any hard decisions until nearer the time that the franchising process is coming to a head. Sure they can outline the multiple things they will be looking at in each applicant but things like The number of teams and where they come from and go from should be made closer to the time. What we need is as many teams playing top flight Rugby as possible, and anyone that has a solid application should be accepted. Its easy enough to work out a Fixture and league system where upwards of 30 teams can play top flight sport, Just look at America.

We should also Award the highest amount of points for Youth structures when considering applications. This is the single most important thing we need to get right, if we can get 20-30 clubs working hard at getting Kids playing, Training and improving. Then we might start to make some headway on the international scene, which will automatically make the sport easier to sell to TV and the public. I would be happy if a third of points awarded we awarded on youth structures. But i may well be alone on that one.

I Would also be happy to see more french teams in the competition, in fact i think it is desperately needed. Perfect Scenario would be where we have 3-4 French clubs in the competition, And the French Federation deals with a TV deal for them. The British clubs and their tv deal is sorted through the RFL. This way the french Federation could distribute its TV deal monies with Its SL club and hopefully use any extras to strengthen its domestic league and groom clubs for SL inclusion one by one. The RFL could do the same with its Monies, So long as we are all working from the same salary cap then i dont see much of an issue.

Money is not the only reason i would like to see More french clubs in SL, The Catalans club need a local rivals to compete with on the national stage. Something for the fans and the french media to get their teeth into, sure it was great having the Famous Wigan club visiting and would put bums on seats but each year it becomes just another game. Then its not the famous Wigan pulling in the Crowds its just another Game against English Opposition. But some local Rivals would fire the imagination each time they met. I love the Widnes - Wire Derbies, the games against saint's, Wigan and Leigh. With the exception of Leigh they are the things i miss most about being in the championship, that firecracker atmosphere that really draws you in and gets old men singing and young kids concentrating.

I dont expect people to agree with me but there are many issues here and the RFL have a hell of a job keeping things together, You have me and my flatcapper friends that still love our clubs no matter how much we are told they should die. They have the need to expand the game, and it is something we need, they have limited Funding issues. They have to deal with the complete lack of enough talent to do the sport justice on the international scene. The sport needs to keep advancing and changing to to meet the demands of the its fans, and the worst thing we can do is not let clubs in that are doing the right things and bringing kids into their club and working with them. Just like we cant punish clubs just because there isnt room and leeds dont want a pay cut ( only used leeds as an example of a big club, relax

).

For me a club should only be expelled from SL for one reason, Financial meltdown. If that happens they should be relegated at the end of that season and forced to re-apply. On the basis that to get a franchise they already ticked the Youth/Stadium/Support Boxes, and so these should be a given for a SL club ( Crowds Vary dramatically with success and so should only be scored on having the potential to reach a minimum acceptable level ). I personally wouldnt want to see salford destroyed as a club so Widnes can get into SL, and relegating them would probably destroy the club. When for a minor cut in TV monies Both clubs could enjoy the Big games. And with an expanded league you have an expanded audience and an expanded youth system. And then you never know what the future might hold. Next time i visit Elland Road i might come away after watching England Beat France in the 4 nations final.

I will probably still have cramp in my knees because it's a **** hole, but maybe next time i will be too busy talking to my kids about the match to care.

So why is home attendance reflected in TWO franchise points? Because the RFL recognise that high attendances have many positive spin offs.

Boosting travelling support can add to these benefits.

I personally think the whole licensing criteria system is completely phoney and doesn't achieve what it is meant to achieve: that is a reflective grading of a rugby league club to compare with others.

Let's use an example:

Say a club has 9,000 average, plays in a 23,000 capacity stadium that isn't premier standard, averages top 9, has 7 home grown players, turns over £3.5m, has recently been insolvent but is good now, hasn't broken the salary cap and has clubs close to it. They only achieve one point for stadium above 12k and one point for not breaking the cap, but are really close on all others.

Now compare that to a club with a 4,800 average, plays in a 12,000 capacity premier ground, averages 12th position, has 3 home grown players, turns over £2m, isn't insolvent, hasn't broken the cap and has no-one near them. They get 6 points (12k ground, premier ground, 40% if ground full, not insolvent, not broken the cap and no-one near). That's a B grade license, yet they haven't really achieved anything on or off the pitch that is worth mentioning.

To me, there shouldn't be a "one point for this, no points for this" criteria list. It should be "you get so many points for having this level of one criteria" sort of situation.

Also, not having a 40% full ground shouldn't be worth as much as having a decent average attendance, or having a decent turnover. Certain criteria should be worth less than others. If you turn over £10m+ like Leeds, that shouldn't be worth the same as turning over £4m. If you average 9k spectators, that shouldn't be worth the same as averaging 3k.