Spot on. The only time I hear anything about Wakefield Trinity other than Sky Sports and the local papers is in the pubs on match days, and that's because the people are either going or have been to the game. Compare this to Castleford where the whole town literally lives and breathes Cas Tigers 365 days a year.

For those saying that the only way to hear about Trinity is the Wakefield Express or Sky, where do you expect to hear about them ?

Maybe we should be trying to get some local pubs to show re-runs of games and perhaps they can advertise more but, in reality, it's down to the fans to talk the club up a little more and get our friends interested in coming to a game.

There isn't a magic wand here, although, some on field success would certainly help.

certainly winning the Super league Grand Final would go a long way to informing the Wakefield public that a professional sports team exists in the town. Looking around the crowd the other night it strikes me that the majority of supporters seem to be middle aged/ older men which suggests we need to appeal more to the younger population of Wakefield somehow.

I'm not 100% sure that a new stadiums the answer to Trinity s prayers. Playing wise the clubs on the up and seems to be financially sound that's two massive strides taken in a short space of time.
Season ticket sales are generally sold to out and out supporters Wakefield challenge must be to get more people to want to buy them and that will not happen overnight.
Incentives will probably need to be offered to your more casual visitor to the ground. All sorts of offers could be introduced 2 for 3 etc etc.
Bell vue although past it can be a great place to visit and I don't think that your more casual supporter minds it's dated facilities.
I think younger supporters need accommodating more and would be interested to know how many student season ticket holders actually purchased a full season ticket.
Would it be possible for instance to throw the gates open against Catalans and have a family fun day at the same time.

Hmmm, it would appear that way but I always hesitate to categorise a huge group of people. In theory, I cannot see any reason why the public of Wakefield would be any different to the public of any other town or city.
My feelings on attendances are as follows:
1. We look like we have a hard core of 4000 - 4500 judging by Thurs night attendances and the Catalans game when we are the only ones there. This is probably up on say 3 or 4 years ago but not by as much as it ought to be considering the past 2 seasons.
2. We are still in the middle of an economic black period; this we can do nothing about other than offers on ticket prices and we have been down this line before and the problems that cheap/ free tickets can create, though I do think we should do more to get young kids in. Our core support looks like it is ageing when I look around! We need to address this
3. The ground is the main issue. If you are not an aficionado of the sport but are looking for something to take up following or even an occasional visit, I am sad to say Belle Vue will put you off us. Bad weather I am sure knocks hundreds, if not thousands sometimes, off some games.
4. Marketing. I am not sure what the club does if I am honest as I live in Beverley so I might be missing local initiatives. But I see nothing in my Dad's letter pile in Horbury. Whilst I am sure cost is an issue, maybe we do need to target key groups. Maybe a bit of local market research if it hasn't been done already, is in order.

Just my thoughts. I don't think Wakefield folk are any more or less apathetic re sport than anyone else, personally

The people of Wakefield aren't apathetic to sport, but to most, they are happy to travel further afield to watch it as that's what they're used to doing for other top class sports. If they want to watch football then they travel to Leeds, Huddersfield or Barnsley etc. If they want to watch cricket then off they trot to headingley to watch the T20 or test matches, if they want to watch RU then it's off to Carnegie they head.

I think a major hit to Wakefield happened in the late 90s when Bradford Bulls were on the ascendancy, and they ran huge marketing campaigns in Wakefield etc to bring in fans from far and wide. It worked and often on match day you'd see fans travelling over to Bradford instead of to a local club. I always suspected that these weren't old trinity fans, but were new fans to the sport, then as times became harder both financially and for the Bradford club, these new people stepped away from the sport again.

As to what I think Wakefield could do to improve things; a weekly club email which gets sent to all fans who sign up for it, a thank you letter at around this time of year which thanks season ticket holders for their support and reminds them of any offers etc that can be used with the season ticket (meal discounts etc). Try to drum up local business support, have posters made which can be displayed in shop windows and banners made highlighting the next game (Leeds Rhinos are excellent at this). Get the players doing something which will get them on calender news or look North (for a good reason), something that's not necessarily related to rugby so will be in the main news segment.

Wakefield has a new university campus, it's nothing spectacular, but it's rife with students who may not be afford a ticket, doing a decent student discount as well as some savvy marketting might entice them to come along

Excellent ideas imo

The ultimate best way to sell the game though is by winning games and making the home ground a fortress. Fans want to come and see a competitive game and their team win, we can all pretend to be happy in defeat, but the reality is that we want to feel the elation of watching your team win. While this year has been brilliant on the whole, the home form has been rather hit miss, which is a big drag. For the casual fan to spend £20+ each to maybe watch their team win it's a big ask, ask anyone in Castleford the same though and they're much less likely to see it as an issue now that WR is a fortress for them.

This isn't a knock at the team though, I know they've been fantastic and 100% committed in every game

I don't know, see Keighly Cougers / Bradford Bulls circa 1995 perhaps. Plenty of ideas there.

I refer to Item 3 in your list, charlie. Salford in new ground, large city. pathetic couple of thousand spectators: Castleford in crappy stadium, small town, large attendances of 8 or 9 thousand. Wakefield in crappy stadium, city of 80,000, attendances of 4500 ish, playing good rugby: Reason - APATHY

Wakefield Trinity want to send players into the junior and comprehensive schools around dishing out free tickets of which a few hundred would want their dads or big brothers and sisters to go with them.

I tend to disagree with the decision not to give discounted rates to students. I think its better to have a couple of hundred students in the ground paying reduced ticket price, than none at all.

I wonder if it has been worth it overall, don't suppose you can accurately work it out, I believe the school's is the way to go, get them young at all costs, personally think u13 should be free at all games, this should be RL wide.

The game itself might be the beginning and end of everything for the die-hards but its not enough for everyone, it has to offer other attractions.
Sure, the game itself is the central event but it can't be the only reason to be there, Match day needs to be exactly that, a day of entertainment for everyone.
At the moment, we only cater for die-hards, the recent upturn in success on the field is a help but I think its a bit of a blinkered ideal to think that that's all you need to grow an attendance.
Can't wait to get the hell out of there tbh......and I'm a die-hard [iEst1980[/i

Good point that Inside Man about Under 13s being free, though not sure how viable it is.

I would maybe target that to Under 11s.

On top of the abovein getting kids in.

I do remember that there used to be a kidzone/fanzone around where the matchday ticket booth is now

Surely all clubs have nothing substantial to lose by letting u13s in free. There would be longer term benefits I'm sure.

Not just looking at the the benefits to the club but RL at an amateur level is moribund, we need to have more kids interested in playing as well as watching, we will reap the benefits long term.

I think getting people in at an early age is critical and key to getting them hooked. I first started going just before my teenage years and was then going almost every home game, and some away right up to when I went to University. As a school kid I felt very proud to have a season ticket which was reasonably priced.

Then in the 90s I went to University and began work away from Wakefield. I could rarely afford to go to games in the early 90s and transport was an issue too. However since I've become financially more stable and am now able to drive I've been back for many years. Why am I back? Simple really, I was hooked from an early age. That is why I am prepared to drive 100+ miles most weekends to watch Trinity.

The crowds haven't been pathetic, why the need for the OTT language. They are honest figures which is far more important. More would be better obviously.

Sorry but I Don't think saying honest figures sums up the very poor attendance for such a big game.

What crowd were you expecting for a Thursday night Sky match?

Not a big one to be honest, hence me posting the Question.

That's what I meant by honest. It looked ok me under the circumstances. It's all about perceptions really. Under Glover we thought we were smashing box office records, turned out half were in on feebies. Even then he'd have added another thousand non existent 1000 non existent fans for good measure.

At least with Carter you know they all paid and at the end of the day that's what counts.

Crowds are always linked to results. How many more would be going to Hull tonight but for that cock up last week? That was just one game!

Participation numbers from 6-12 years old are up and a lot of work has been done by WT community team to help with that, the area in decline is from 15-18 years old where the community game is on its backside, not to mention open age sides dropping like flies, 2 years ago the Pennine league had just short of 100 teams in their league s and now it is short of 50 teams registered to play 13 a side, this is the area where the apathy lies and needs to be addressed as so many potentially good players are leaving the game. We won't find all the next world beaters by just looking at U12's to 14's as players are nowhere near fully developed at these ages, there is more potential to be found at 17-19 year olds, so rather than picking up a 100 15's and then letting 93 of them go at 17 and probably lose them from the game (as a player and a supporter) forever, the focus should be moved to the area of the game that is genuinely in decline and offers genuine potential.

I thought in the region of 5,800 considering what's to play for, the quality of play etc, I'd have expected 6,400 on a Sunday.
Unrealistic? Obviously.