Quote AdmiralHanson="AdmiralHanson"How do London feel about missing out yet again on the lucrative revenue that the supporters of the defending champions would bring ?'"
Whilst I'd like to have as many visiting supporters as possible, this pales into insignificance compared to the need to grow our own support.
Regarding some of the points in your earlier message:
As has already been pointed out by others this match was scheduled to kick off at 5pm pretty much as soon as the fixtures were released.
At least your regular late kick offs in London are on a Saturday; ours in Leeds are on a Friday, meaning time off work for the majority attending. (And, of course,
=#FF0000none of our away trips are significantly shorter than yours to London.)
I checked the train times for 12 June and the last train back to Leeds leaves at 2030, not 2000 (changing at Doncaster) with a total journey time of 2hrs 28 mins, no longer than the last direct one home from Leeds in my experience. Under normal circumstances you could be at Twickenham station within ten minutes of the hooter, at Waterloo within about a further thirty minutes, and at King's Cross within another thirty minutes. ETA around 1950. Admittedly that doesn't allow for any major hold ups, but if you book your return ticket from Twickenham as opposed to King's Cross you should be safe from paying any additional cost incurred by train company failure. I've got no chance whatsoever of getting back from a Friday night game at Headingley by train.
I can empathise with many of your points as my own preferred method of travel to away games is by train; I'm also very familiar with the need to book as far in advance as possible (i.e. 12 weeks) to get the best prices. We all know Sky have licence to meddle; a few years ago they used to announce the live televised matches for the first 23 out of 28 rounds (and they still made occasional alterations for one reason or another), but now it only seems to be about the first 13 or 14 rounds. Sadly you just have to hedge your bets or not travel, or wait until fixtures are confirmed and hope there are still some reasonably cheap tickets to be had. Personally I work on the basis that our Sunday games are usually only moved to the Saturday, not the Friday by Sky, and usually arrange to be up north for the whole weekend, staying over on the Saturday night, and find another rugby or football match to watch on the spare day. I've already made this contingency plan for our fixtures at Huddersfield and Castleford later in the summer. Occasionally you can still come unstuck. A couple of years ago our game at Wakefield was put back to 7pm on the Sunday, but fortunately I wasn't coming back until the Monday anyway. Last year our game at Hull KR was moved from Sunday pm to Friday evening, which would have totally shafted me, but fortunately I'd decided not to go anyway. This year St Helens was moved from the Friday evening to the Sunday afternoon after I'd booked a cheap non-refundable hotel in Liverpool (which seems to be an incredibly expensive city to stay unless booking well in advance) so I've decided to make the most of it, watch Wigan v Warrington on the Friday, and stay over for the rest of the weekend before returning after our game on the Sunday. That's the reality of following a Superleague rugby club.
