Quote ="Itchy Arsenal"Cheers Matty'" Found them! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_XXIV 2019 average attendances Cas 7253 (789icon_cool.gif down Catalans 10560 (8353) up Hudds 5222 (5745) down Hull FC 11478 (12174) down Hull KR 8185 (7964) up Leeds 11838 (12807) down London 2021 NA Salford 3676 (274icon_cool.gif up Saints 11910 (1147icon_cool.gif up Wakefield 5468 (5244) up Wire 10970 (1008icon_cool.gif up Wigan 11432 (1170icon_cool.gif down We have slipped to fourth with Leeds, Saints and Hull ahead. Six teams show attendance increases - Catalans, Hull KR, Salford, Saints, Wakefield and Wire.

Quote ="Itchy Arsenal"Cheers Matty'" Found them! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_XXIV 2019 average attendances Cas 7253 (789icon_cool.gif down Catalans 10560 (8353) up Hudds 5222 (5745) down Hull FC 11478 (12174) down Hull KR 8185 (7964) up Leeds 11838 (12807) down London 2021 NA Salford 3676 (274icon_cool.gif up Saints 11910 (1147icon_cool.gif up Wakefield 5468 (5244) up Wire 10970 (1008icon_cool.gif up Wigan 11432 (1170icon_cool.gif down We have slipped to fourth with Leeds, Saints and Hull ahead. Six teams show attendance increases - Catalans, Hull KR, Salford, Saints, Wakefield and Wire.

Quote ="MattyB"Found them! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_XXIV 2019 average attendances Cas 7253 (789icon_cool.gif down Catalans 10560 (8353) up Hudds 5222 (5745) down Hull FC 11478 (12174) down Hull KR 8185 (7964) up Leeds 11838 (12807) down London 2021 NA Salford 3676 (274icon_cool.gif up Saints 11910 (1147icon_cool.gif up Wakefield 5468 (5244) up Wire 10970 (1008icon_cool.gif up Wigan 11432 (1170icon_cool.gif down We have slipped to fourth with Leeds, Saints and Hull ahead. Six teams show attendance increases - Catalans, Hull KR, Salford, Saints, Wakefield and Wire.'" Weirdly despite all the doom and gloom, had we increased our attendances by a mere 500 spectators last year we would have topped the group (including the all conquering, all entertaining, it's gone wide to West, never write off St Helens).

Quote ="MattyB"Found them! https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Super_League_XXIV 2019 average attendances Cas 7253 (789icon_cool.gif down Catalans 10560 (8353) up Hudds 5222 (5745) down Hull FC 11478 (12174) down Hull KR 8185 (7964) up Leeds 11838 (12807) down London 2021 NA Salford 3676 (274icon_cool.gif up Saints 11910 (1147icon_cool.gif up Wakefield 5468 (5244) up Wire 10970 (1008icon_cool.gif up Wigan 11432 (1170icon_cool.gif down We have slipped to fourth with Leeds, Saints and Hull ahead. Six teams show attendance increases - Catalans, Hull KR, Salford, Saints, Wakefield and Wire.'" Weirdly despite all the doom and gloom, had we increased our attendances by a mere 500 spectators last year we would have topped the group (including the all conquering, all entertaining, it's gone wide to West, never write off St Helens).

And they had 2 home derbies to our 1
Switch that about and there would be nothing in it

It's still not good though, we should, after 10 years of Very Good success (and I appreciate people will view it in different ways) be looking IMO to be around 13k plus as a year in year out average.
Remember at the start of last year there were lots of people all over sites telling us that the rugby was boring, Wane had to go, as if that was the answer to the gates issue.
They set up the deal with Lam and Edward's and there was this positivity around the place (not by everyone but a large percantage) and guess what, crowds went down.

Potentially this year, investing in 2/3 top names to add to the late addition of French last year, and what do we think will happen? All those that wanted star names and leneghan to take his hands out of his pockets etc as that will be the answer, do you think it will suddenly increase by 2k a game average?
Me personally, No.

And they get the luxury of two home games again this season too.

Recovering 2k lost supporters is going to be a hard slog. To be honest chances are the same 2k will probably never return and it's for the club to attract 2k new supporters (young fans coming of age).

I remember when my two lads played at Judes, when they start off young all the parents are there at training sessions and matches. New friendships through coaches and parents are formed (some of my best friends that I still see today we met this way).

The kids socialise and get season tickets together and so do the parents. At one point (around 2012) there was over thirty parents and kids all sat together in the South Stand. It was a great weekly social occasion.

Guess what happened, the kids got older. Some dropped away from playing, the parents started to fall away from watching the kids at training and games, would pick and choose the big Wigan games, then it became just the finals, then finally stopped all together. Last season the count went from thirty of us in 2012 to five.

But its cyclical, at all amateur clubs today new kids are playing, parents show up in droves and socialise. This social group is one where Wigan should be targeting.

According to a police officer who I knew and on duty that night, it was estimated by the police that there were 43,000 inside the ground, as a result of the Police Inspector in charge deciding, when the official figure of 36,895 was reached with hundreds still outside, he made a decision to allow everyone in, rather than have any trouble and a possible storming of the ground, as many had come from around the North of England and beyond, which included many who been drinking well before the game. As the club did not expect the crowd to be so high, it was not made a all ticket game except for seating.

It must be remembered that at the time, there were not the same level of thinking by the police about control of mass crowds at sporting venues as there has been since Hillsborough.

I hate to think what it was like when the ground held a record attendance of 47,747 for a game with St Helens in 1959.

Evidently, many of today's supporters were not around when games in the Floodlit Trophy, Lancashire Cup, Challenge Cup Replays were played on Tuesday and Wednesday nights at a time when the game played in Winter and in front of far bigger crowds than what we get today.

Wigan not getting a game in World Cup as not helped as in my opinion, the decision has made many wigan supporters think that the RFL are against the club.

When we played at Central Park, we got numerous special games like Challenge Cup Semi Finals, Internationals, County and Amateur Finals, Schoolboy Finals, County Games, Internationals and even the Final of the local Ken Gee Cup Competition.

All gone as a result of Wigan Council not helping the club in the mid nighties and choosing instead to support Dave Whelan and his joint stadium white elephant which is now owned by the Latic's.

And people wonder why there is no longer in Wigan, the same interest in our game, irrespective of other interests or work commitments.

Come back Maurice Lindsay, a Chairman who knew how to create interest in supporters!

Times have changed dramatically since then though, even though they weren’t that long ago.

Social tendencies, habits have changed. Back in the times you’re talking about Wigan (and RL in general) weren’t on TV that much. Some people didn’t have TV’s so the only way to watch Wigan was to go.

My first choice is always to go if I can irrelevant of whether it’s on TV. I’m just about from the era that went to games as there was no other way than the Sky era. The same can’t be said for everyone though and as much as Sky has done wonders for the game, it also makes it easier not to go.

But then I look at clubs where ST and ticket sales are up and that argument falls apart.

ST sales may have stagnated on the back of last year which if we’re being honest we were bloody lucky to get to where we did. Some fans are not sold on Lam, concerned that their hard earned money will be spent on a ST and they’ll stop going half way through because the quality is poor. That’s just one “excuse” I can think of. I’m pretty sure there are hundreds more.

My concern now is what does the club do about it? I genuinely don’t know. We’ve tried different things; Big One, games on the road, marquee signings and it doesn’t seem to be working. I remember when I was in school and Latics were in the old Div 2. They used to send free tickets to home games every time they played at home and we used to go because it was free. A few of my mates then became Latics fans leaving behind the Utd’s, Liverpool’s and Everton’s of this world and are now ST holders and have been for years (I stayed loyal to Liverpool

). Perhaps it’s time we did that as a club. Sent free tickets to the high schools in the borough. Even be cheeky and send them out of borough too. Speculating to accumulate future fans.

only against Saints really or important games. Wednesday nights never attracted large crowds

You may be right about the numbers, but supporters at least made the effort to go to them without any moaning about having to get up in the morning for work or kids being at school.

And there was a better and more noisy atmosphere at Central Park than what we get at Whelans Folly. At some games, visiting supporters make more noise than us and we only get behind the team if they get well in front and even then, some are too busy looking at a mobile phone.

The fact that most weeks we rattle round in a ground double the size we need doesn’t help and the club really need to do something about making the atmosphere better and getting the home and away support sat closer together. There is only a need to open the North Stand when Saints come to town and maybe the odd isolated occasion other than that but for 95% of the games I really think we should consider housing eve away fans in the first couple of blocks of the East stand, down towards the South Stand. Some people go to a game to experience an atmosphere, to have banter with opposition fans and by having them sat rattling around miles away from any home support isn’t helping.

It would be a small step in the right direction for me. It wouldn’t improve crowds at the drop of a hat but if you get more of an atmosphere going and it’s a better experience going to games, that spreads and people enjoy themselves and want to go more.

thats because they are all in the same place, we are very noisy away. If it was on tv on wednesdays my dad wouldnt have taken me as it would have been better due to school and travel etc. In them days you didnt have RL on TV unless it was large cup games

Only way you'll get a lot of lapsed Wigan fans back now is if we have our own stadium. I'd rather stand on a grass verge at Robin Park Arena than sit in a soulless dump like the DW. Come on Lenners lad, announce Robin Park.

Both my late parents went together to that match and said, it was that crowded, their feet hardly touched the ground after the match till they got to Standishgate.

Reputations are hard won and easily lost. So are ST holders. IL has taken them for granted for a few years with some disasterous PR stunts - Millwall, Hull in Oz, Edwards, Bateman re-signing etc. It will take more than a couple of signings to rebuild the trust between the club and the former ST holders.

If NONE of those things had happened - I would suggest we would be in virtually the same position we are now
Said it previously,
People blame IL for not buying big names - We buy big names and nothing changes
People Blame the stadium - But we've averaged crowds at this stadium bigger than anything we had at Central Park
We had Big names in the early 00's - Rubbish crowds
We have had teams with average players - Big Crowds

We've had success - Rubbish crowds
We've had periods of mediocrity and had Great crowds

People have seen my previous thoughts on this subject and ultimately I do believe that the club do need to "Market"/Promote the club better than it does especially in the last year or 2 - But I also believe that the fans/casual watchers or whatever do need to decide if we want the club to remain at the top of RL hierarchy. It's a 2 way street and I have also said that some of the Fans negativity towards it's chairman, coach, players, stadium etc.. over the last 7/8 years or so through what I would argue relatively speaking is one of the most successful periods in the clubs history is remarkable!
And the trouble with that is that through Social Media reach the most dissenting voices get heard more and over a wider audience and it affects other peoples perceptions creating even more negativity.
We seem very happy to criticise the smallest thing, but unwilling to praise what are sometimes fantastic achievements.

Agree.

Casual fans have too many excuses not to show up these days. The two playoff crowds against Salford were abysmal and not far short of embarrassing especially when you consider what the queue for OT tickets would have looked like first thing Saturday morning.

The "official" crowds may be better at the DW Stadium because it is a more secure Stadium with full length turnstyles instead of small turnstyles where kids could be handed over, climb over or crawl under and no accessible walls to climb like there was at Central Park.

If the club and some supporters think that the signing of Hastings, George Burgess, Bibby and Clarke are big signings, they are poor compared to some of the signings of other clubs and have not inspire, from what I gather, a mad rush for season tickets.

As for the marketing of games, you only have to look at the lack of pre match publicity at many non season ticket games games like Challenge Cup ties and play off games like last seasons Play Off Semi Final, even for the recent Liam Farrell Testimonial game.

And what success the club has had in the last 7/8 years is nothing compared to the time that the "gang of four" ran the club, especially when Maurice Lindsay was the Chairman.

Even the club website is out of date. The season starts next week and unlike other top clubs, we still do not know the names of the players who will be in the squads of the Under 18, Under 16 Academies or the Women's team.

Sorry, but as far as I am concerned, the marketing and publicity of the club has gone downhill in the last few seasons especially since good administration staff like Simon, Graham and Paul have left the club.

Don't know where to start?

I can't compare crowds at the DW to Central Park as some kids may have crawled under a turnstyle or climbed over a wall? Ok

Current Man of Steel signed this year plus an International Ex NRL Experienced Prop - A previous Man of Steel the previous year - But our recruitment isn't as good as other clubs
And bear in mind, without any financial restrictions that the current Regime need to deal with the Gang of 4 also signed Billy McGinty, Neil Cowie, Barrie McDermott, Terry O'Connor, Sam Panapa, Ged Byrne, Martin Hall None of which were superstars but went on to "Play their Part" in the success we had.

As for the success of the Gang of 4 - Maybe that's part of the reason were playing at the DW? Didn't end too well did it?
And if You or anyone else want to continually refer to the success of the 85-95 period as a Benchmark to judge all other Era's/owners/coaches/players by then I'm afraid you will continually be disappointed (And maybe that's where the problem lies).
Rightly or Wrongly the current regime have to play by the rules/situation of today - Salary Cap, NRL Increased Salary Cap, Professional RU/Summer Rugby etc.
If the Gang of 4 had to deal with any of those never mind all 4 or more they wouldn't have been able to do what they did.
The last 10 years or so In my opinion the success that the club have achieved has been fantastic. The players we've had the privilege of watching especially some of the Home grown such as Sam Tomkins/Oilver Gildart/George Williams and one of the 3/4 wingers that have come through not to mention some of the young forwards has been great.

But it appears None of that is good enough for some people
And if you read my post I do mention that the club need to market things better, but I also say that the club needs to cut it's cloth
When we allegedly didn't buy top names and we brought youth through they were criticised
Were buying better names and they're criticised
But I also mentioned that even if it's not in the playing department that cuts need to be made then they will need to be made "Somewhere". And maybe that's where? Marketing, youth development etc.

.... add to that in recent seasons:

Women's team.
PDRL team.
Community Work.
College Courses & other further education initiatives.
Kids camps.

The gang of 4 never even looked into anything other than what we saw on the playing field.

The gang of 4 couldn't even bear the thought of Wigan Athletic being allowed to play an important FA cup game against Liverpool at Central Park (even though some gate receipts revenue would have filtered through to Wigan RL). Madness and short-sighted.

The mid eighties to mid nineties were a period I will always remember with great fondness but looking back you can't help but notice that grave mistakes were made along the way.

The gang of four never looked into what you have said because at the time Women playing rugby or even football was looked upon as not being right. In fact for many years, the FA actually had a ban of women playing their game while many supporters of our game treated women playing rugby as a joke. The club at the time did some community work with players visiting schools, day centres for the handicapped etc. They also had no involvement in education as the Council did not at the time do joint projects like the one at the former Pemberton High School and they did not consider things like kids camps just to make money.

The gang of four and rightly so, cared only about providing supporters with success, top class signings, but did make mistakes, the biggest of which was selling Central Park to Tesco without first of all getting plans for a new Stadium passed by the Council.

The crowds at the DW Stadium may be bigger as there is not the same way of getting in free as there was at Central Park.

And the signings of Bibby, George Burgess, Clarke and even Hastings can hardly be described as big signings like those even of the Madge couple of seasons. One a average /winger, a prop forward at the end of his career and a player Castleford sent out on loan to Leigh. Only Hastings has played anything like a top player and I reserve judgement of him until I see how he performs for us in a few games.

The best signings I have seen since the signing of Bateman have been the elevation of Academy players like Byrne, Gildart, Partington, Smith and Smithies, together with Bevan French and Zak Hardacre

I wish people would stop drawing comparisons with the late 80s / early 90s.

That was a golden age for Wigan, but it was also only manageable because we had no salary cap, the NRL played at a different time of year and RU was still a joke game wherein the bottomless pockets were only available when it came to restocking club chairmen's drinks cabinets.

No one can surely believe that the likes of Hanley, Edwards, Lydon, Offiah, Connolly, Inga etc would have been at Wigan under today's circumstances.

There is no like for like between now and that era, and anyone who keeps using it as a benchmark for what Wigan Warriors can be is doomed to be disappointed. Either that, or they are being deliberately mischievous.

Correct about there being no salary cap and the NRL being played at a different time, but the fact remains that clubs had more big names from down under and Union, the rugby was better and played in a better atmosphere at Central Park and indeed many other grounds on a Sunday Afternoon in the company of a crowd who were more vocal after spending a couple of hours or so before a game in one or more of the pubs at many of the grounds.

Those were the days of far more interest, enjoyment and visiting supporters in watching a game unlike today.

Perhaps, being a all seating stadium like those at Huddersfield and Hull and the lack of many pubs and clubs near some new stadiums may have something to do with the lack of the same atmosphere at those grounds.

Times have changed. I don't particularly agree with all of Wire's social media Tomfoolery but it has to be said, our attendances are on the up.

With American culture now rife in the UK with more and more people invested in American sports (Why I have no idea) the kids these days don't just go to watch the game, they go for an event.

It started years ago. We'd be stood in our usual peg. The age group watching it would be mostly 25+. But then there would be teenage girls with no interest in the game stood around on their phones, messing around, play fighting ect and otherwise being annoying as f*ck. They went because I assume they fancied the small collection of teenage lads who mostly stood behind us. In conclusion the average age was much older on the terraces, the kids weren't interested in RL, they were more interested in computer games and loitering in local parks.

Since Wire's embracement of American sport culture and all the gimmick crap that goes with it, when you now walk around town there are Wire shirts everywhere. you go into a local and there's 3 or 4 people wearing them on non game days, when you go to the games the average age is much lower and the annoying kids are now turning up wearing colours and actually engaged in the game and not their phones. the ground fills up way before kick off and not 10 minutes before.

We might not like it but that's what interests the young people of today and if the game is to survive and flourish its what it needs. Blue Chip sponsors love it. Wigan attendances will always look small even averaging 14,000 because of the size of the stadium. The natural interest of the average person in RL in Wigan is probably the best in the UK, aside from Hull perhaps. If Wigan could embrace the gimmicky Americanisation of the game day 'experience' and how they market games then attendances would improve much better than what we have seen.

Warrington have to fight for local people to take up an interest in RL, In Wigan you don't. All that needs to be done for you lot is to convince people that they're missing out on something massive if they don't go. That you're not just paying to see a game of low intensity mid season RL, they're paying for a major event where the entertainment isn't just the RL its the build up, the half time show and the events taking place in the concourse before and after kick off.