Yet again today, no presence at all from your fans at a game in England.

Many of us have enjoyed visiting Perpignan and have boosted the economy of the city year after year. What have you done for the English clubs and their cities and towns? How long can this ridiculous situation be sustained, particularly in the prevailing recession? Many English clubs are losing money and they could really do with a club in the SL who can provide fans through the gates TO MAKE A CONTRIBUTION, rather than yourselves. You contribute nothing to the finances of other SL clubs, whilst most SL clubs contibute much to Catalans Dragons. Would you be happy if the situation were reversed?

The game needs to expand but WILL NOT be helped by this continuing farcical situation. Charity starts at home (ie: England), not in France!

The usual response to such posts is to call the poster a 'flat capper'. Do so if you wish but I'd rather hear from someone who could provide a solution which would actually see your club making a positive contribution.

I know we aren't a lot of fans for every game but you should understand that travelling every week, or every two weeks, is very expensive. You must pay the hotel, food and beers, taxis or/and trains tickets, without forgetting the fly.

We are some huge rugby league fans and of course, we support our team, but we can afford the trip every week. So we prefer going in England for the best games, like play-offs, CC Finals, SL final and Magic Week-End !

If my club was located in England and I lived in England, I would go to every game, at home or away !

The NRL is a very successful rugby league competition played in Australia and New Zealand, where rugby league is very popular, much more popular than in the UK and France.

In the NRL there are clubs called North Queensland Cowboys and Melbourne Storm which never bring many supporters to most of their away games. There are also 9 Sydney clubs most of whose fans never attend away games in Queensland and Melbourne. Yet this NRL is a successsful competition which is becomng more successful and richer her every year. And I have never heard the NRL club fans complaining about the far away NRL teams not bringing fans to away games. This kind of complaining seems to be just a problem of a few small thinking English fans from small English towns who cannot see the big picture.

Thanks for your response Tom but your enthusiasm doesn't help to pay the bills at the clubs in England, whereas I would imagine that the contribution from English fans to your club helps them to afford the quality of players they currently have. It's just not a fair, balanced situation and I'm not sure how long it can be sustained. Your club need to start thinking of a solution.

This may be news to you but SL is not the NRL! So you think the situation is fair? Are you not aware of the financial problems some SL clubs are having? Again, would you be happy if the situation were reversed and French clubs were making a massive contribution to one English club without that English club doing anything in return?

Well said, how people expect you Catalan fans to pay for flights, hotels and everything else you mentioned everyother week is crazy.
The rfl want s/l to expand so fans like Sunset should get off there high horse, blame the rfl not Catalan fans.

Oh and by the way, there was 2 Cats fans I saw in the east stand today so you did bring some after all that haha.

I'm sure if you offer to pay for their travel costs and accommodation every two weeks then plenty of French fans would be more than happy to visit and 'contribute' to your club.

What a stupid post. Each English club will only travel to France ONCE each season. On that basis Cats should only visit England once. I wonder which club they will choose to visit. A real poser eh????

Gosh. A game with two weeks notice and you're expecting people to travel a thousand miles to get there.


Any club relying on away support to make ends meet has serious underlying issues that are better addressed by looking internally than blaming some people at the other end of the continent from not going to east Hull for a Sunday afternoon out.


Yet again, it's Hull KR fans (not all of them, before anyone shouts at me) obsessed with away support. Why is this?


All that said, it's kind of nice to have a thread like this again. It's like it's 2007 all over again.

Hold on John, 1 alleged Hull KR fan is obsessed with your away support, personally I wouldn't expect many fans to come over to England every other week as I stated above.

Over the years, it's become something of a cliché that there's a fixation on away fans east of the river Hull.
Your rational comments are more than welcome as a counterpoint to that.

I've read some crap in my time but that's up there with the very best (or should that be worst) of them.

Succinct and to the point. Like it

From the sang-et-or archives, because we've been over all this ad nauseum, Puig-Aubert's mini-series [url=http://catalan.rlfans.com/viewpage.php?page_id=15Mythbusters[/url

Flat earthers! Fantastic!!

Only just caught up with this thread... priceless.

Has to be a wind-up.

Many replies but still no solutions on offer.

How are your club and fans contributing financially to SL?

Many clubs have their lowest attendances of their seasons when playing Catalans and London at home. This would not be the case if they were playing Featherstone, Halifax etc. So, how can you contribute more?

To those who have made contributions to this thread already, please don't do it again unless you have answers to the above. Derisory comments and nothing else only tend to confirm that the point I'm making is a valid one.

Average home attendance for Catalans: 8728
Average home attendance for Widnes: 6316
Average home attendance for London: 3044
Average home attendance for Castleford: 7846

Obviously a portion of our home attendance will be traveling fans, however the same can be said for the Widnes, London and Castleford attendance, so the fact that we have between 1 and 5,000 extra (on average) cancels out the lower number of travelling fans.

I offered a solution. You pay for the French fans' air fare and accommodation every two weeks and I'm sure they will be more than happy to visit your club, and every other British club

FWIW I know of at least one plane load from france that went to the Saints game


but though you criticise the Catalans away support which is a valid point the fact is that over the past two seasons Perpignan has seen a huge drop in english away fans - for example,for certain matches this season the travelling support has been negligable ie this season fans from Cas,Salford & Widnes were fairly thin on the ground with about probably 150 from HKR - Wires were fairly well represented in comparison though well down on previous years
Speaking of the l'ocal economy' , the vast majority of travelling fans from england don't actually contribute to the french economy as nowadays they end up flying to spain and staying there cos' it's cheaper than france - you see relatively few english fans in Perpignan nowadays unfortunately

What have the Catalans ever done for us ?

well,ask the RFL, they know it's the best thing they ever did......

Once you've actually identified a problem, then solutions may be forthcoming. Instead of just steamrollering through the myriad responses by simply posing a slightly different question, try taking on board what other people are saying and construct an opinion.

I think I will have a crack at decoding bits...

1. Dragons are still a relatively new club so will need time to build up support. The number of UK based fans is increasing with every match I go to and will continue to grow if we keep playing RL from heaven.

2. The best point raised in this thread is that English based fans have to travel to Perpignan once a season, we have to travel to England every other week. That is worth saying again, and again. Is our OP suggesting French people are richer and can afford to make the journey fortnightly? Could he afford to do that if his side played in the French domestic league and needed to go to Toulouse or Lezignan?

So the crux is... is the OP suggesting Catalans should pay compensation to other clubs for their lack or away support? or is he suggesting the RFL should chuck us out?

What I want to know is what financial issues there are at Hull KR that require a certain number of away fans turning up every other week to cover the shortfall.

I would think what the Catalans bring with regard to TV deals will bring more to Super League than a few fans turning up to East Hull on a wet Sunday afternoon.

My only surprise here is that anyone has taken the OP seriously enough to deem it worthy of a rational reply.