Come on then what did we miss by going home after watching the game of the team we support? The whole top flight of our sport can't fill half a stadium, shows how highly regard it is by fans. And how on earth is that intended to spread the game? You spread the game from grass roots up simple as, not gimmicky gimpfests like this weekend.

Anyway I'm off there is 3 amateur games on at The Willows I'm gonna go and watch, just got to sort my fancy dress costume out first.

If the figures are true and I did say "If" I would call 4-6000 scottish ticket sales a success in it's first year.

Are we who are already fans of the game the right ones to ask if it was a success. We already love the game and would probably watch it if it was being played in downtown Kabul. The people to ask are those who went to watch the game having little or no knowledge of our sport and the questions to ask them are not just did you enjoy the weekend but would you watch this sport if we stuck a team in Scotland. Whats not to enjoy about having a weekend away in an historic beautiful city like Edinburgh, watching Rugby and drinking beer? But it was an event not designed just to have a beano but to "expand" the game in new areas. Only time will tell if its been a success from that perspective but as pointed out in other posts the numbers of local fans who attended are the truer test of its value not that the numbers of fans who are already supporters of the greatest game. And as a final thought if the RFL do decide to franchise to Scotland or Ireland or Kabul!! which teams do you think are vulnerable to being dispensed with?

I thought you had it on already

Enjoy your amateur game youth finals

I didn't go to the Cardiff version so have nothing to compare this weekend with & don't know if it was better or worse.

I do find it puzzling that so many people went all that way at such cost and watched so few games - sat in a pub (and what a goodly number of great pubs there are!!!!) on Saturday night chatting with some Saints fans, they'd ONLY watched their match (and therefore were drowning sorrows) - surely the point of the weekend was an opportunity to see a lot of games and watch many as a neutral - for me that was the most enjoyable thing about it. RL is a fantastic sport and to be able to enjoy the skills on show was great.

Now - to answer the question posed - was the weekend a success? I suspect from a marketing point of view the answer is a resounding "no!" Playing in a half empty stadium benefits no-one; If the aim is to show what a great spectacle we have then you need people to really WANT to get tickets and clearly not enough did. My son lives in Edinburgh and it appears there was precious little local marketing done in the lead up to the weekend - surely free tickets to schools and colleges, competitions on local radio to win tickets etc etc all could have been organised - but when you look at the rugby league organisation generally are we surprised?

For me it was a terrific weekend and I would definitely go again.

What's the one major thing that has changed since last year?

you've got a job and have to pay your way now instead of being a sponging student

I had a good day, thought it was great
I also found it funny when walking back to my car seeing a ed up henry paul chatting to some wire fans saying he loves it when saints get beat hahaha, and then was shocked to see Stapo and Cashmere in the same premier inn as me with thier families

Was miles better than Cardiff however the event is never going to work as most fans are only interested in their own clubs games (myself included) so despite the aggregate attendance of 60000 I bet there was no more than 15000-20000 in the ground for any one game which looks pretty poor in a 70000 stadium.

Did not go as it is a RFL/ Sky deal to fleece the fans of even more money.
I can not think of any other sport who would move a whole weekends fixtures to a stadium and an area who have no concept of the game that is being played there.
To listen to Sky you would think it was a huge success.
I watched United then Salford drunk a load of beer, had a nice meal and then collapsed to bed.
All done at home for a fraction of the cost of going to Edinburgh.

Thanks to the Salford lot, great bunch, great laugh

The bouncy, bouncy song was class, see you all next year

from the Times online Blog, not it all but bits that nicely sums up the weekend, at least one very good point,

"The Ain't Rugby League Brilliant Award to a Rugby Union Correspondent goes to Iain Morrison, who wrote in Scotland on Sunday: "Some of the handling skills still put union players to shame as the number of unforced errors could be counted on the fingers of one hand. When you consider that league players make something like three times as many tackles as their 15-man equivalents that statistic becomes all the more surprising."

Biggest travelling support: Correct me if you think I'm wrong but I think Wigan just pip this one, closely followed by the Rugby Football League and their army of CIA lookalikes. Just who are they whispering to in those headsets ? I thought it was Hull KR from TV

One final thought. Anyone under the illusion that Edinburgh is a sporting city, think again. It's a great hosting city for an event like Magic Weekend but expecting the locals to get involved - and 6,000-odd is a very respectable figure, believe me - is a folly as great as wild talk about a Super League franchise eventually in Scotland. In Edinburgh, Hearts and Hibs are low on the public's radar and people don't much care for club rugby union.

I was struck by an interview in The Sunday Times Scotland with Edinburgh chief executive Nic Cartwright - the same Nic Cartwright who was at London Broncos. A similar hearts-and-minds battle for spectators applies here. Edinburgh's average attendance is 4,274 - a figure swelled by a Scotland record in the Magners League of 12,534 against Glasgow. The core Edinburgh audience is between 2,000 and 2,500. Let's enjoy Magic Weekend again next year but, please, no more talk about professional rugby league north of the border."

the bottom bit from a man in the know.

Thanks to those Reds sat near me who made the weekend so enjoyable.
Thanks to all RL fans for showing how the Rugby League family works.
Thanks to Edinburgh - a fine town with excellent pubs.
Thanks to RL - trying out experiments to show what we have to offer.

A success as we moved away from the M62 (heresy) and showed entertaining games (anathema) featuring colourful fans enjoying themselves (blasphemy) in a national venue (evil).

Apologies to the frequent posters on here as I am not being negative in the post. I understand that this is difficult for many of you but ...
you can give up moaning, belittling, and carping.

As I mentioned on Saturday, during a Scotland union game on TV some while ago the commentator, discussing an Edinburgh player making his Scotland debut, said words to the effect of "he'll be used to the Murrayfield pitch, but not playing in front of anyone."

Having said that, if my Sunday sat on the pan is anything to go by, they may well have had 60,000 fans in the past with the 58,000 of them killed by dodgy hotdogs.

Please refer to individual post. I did say that I'm sure those that went had a great time and as a rugby league fan if I could have afforded it I probably would have done too. However I was actually trying to start an intelligent debate as to whether or not the weekend was a success or failure. If the idea behind it was for a bunch of rugby league fans to go and have a weekend away and watch some rugby that they would have watched anywayn then ok it was a success. If however, the more likely idea was to market and expand the game then I feel it was a failure. Don't feel like this is moaning or carping. I reserve the right to have my opinion. If you want to join the debate then fine but to say we had a great time so the debate does not stand is ridiculous.

So was mine a serious post.

Look - we have potentially the finest sports-audience watching event in the world. Yet it is limited to one huge city in Aus, one small area in NZ, a tiny part of the UK, and a small area of France. Yes we're massive in Papua New Guinea. Yes we have a Lebanon/Tunisia/Moscow league. So what?

Knock it or support it. We show the world what we can do. The Aussies should be doing the same in the state of Victoria (soccer is gaining ground on the "Sydney" game).

I believe that Rugby League is the greatest sport in the world both in participation and watching. I remember the efforts in Oldham to support the league in Dublin. I remember the last efforts in South Wales. Let's keep on trying because if we do not, we disappear. So any effort to rid us of the M62 image, I support.

Failure - NO.

And you know my commitment here.

Yes but once again we appear to have a them and us situation here.
You went and good on you.
But if you think it was a success then you are deluded.
Next year I can arrange a few games on the field outside my house, organise a barby and have loads of beer laid on.
I can even arrange hotels if you wish.
Scotland will never be a Rugby League area, End of.

Before you can make a definate call on the success of anything you have to define how you are going to measure it. Measured by fun in the sun and a great weekends entertainment with rugby and beer then a success it was. Measured by a serious long standing benefit for the game of Rugby League and a seriously effective way of expanding the game in a non rugby league area..debatable.

Nice idea, just doesn't work.

"Next year I can arrange a few games on the field outside my house, organise a barby and have loads of beer laid on.
I can even arrange hotels if you wish.
Scotland will never be a Rugby League area, End of"

[size=150OK do it - [/size
with [uinternational media [/uinterest
with every SL team sending supporters who dress up and enjoy themselves
with all the buzz and flair that speccies expect in the 21st century.
with a fine stadium and hotels around you.

Fulham are to support the soccer craze in Australia this summer - do they expect Broncos to become 11 man teams overnight? No.

Scotland is only an excuse - to be fair we should be in Morocco or Lebanon or Moscow.
If you want, I'll dig out my cloth cap, black pudding butties and think of Alex Murphy ... no not the last. Then we can be side-lined.


If anyone here thinks the main aim was a SL team in Scotland by 2010, they have been sucked in.Read beyond the marketing hype. It was taking the finest team game in the world to the world. We go to Manchester(OK Trafford), London and ... now Edinburgh. Perhaps 2012 will be Dublin.

Fair enough. What points then make you feel it was a failure?

In your last point I don't think anyone has actually said that?

The only measuring factor of whether it was a success or not will be next year. If the scottish take up on tickets improves then surely you would have to say yes?

I think this is one of the main sticking points. How can the RFL make it more appealing to get people to stay for more than their own game? Free tickets wouldn't work. The only thing I can really think of is much cheaper food and drink stalls

The winner of the mascot games gets to punch Cheggers in the face?

Better still all the supporters of the winning mascot get to punch him in the face

maybe locking fans in

will keep the numbers up