"Tend"? You whinge on as if we had been introducing new clubs by the dozen for centuries, and there were statistical conclusions to be drawn.



"Why should?" - Better ask on what basis what happens in London would have any relevance to what happens in South Wales. Or for that matter the south of France.





I don't care what you "can't see happening any time soon". Whatever team is at the bottom of the table is likely to be getting the smaller crowds, it's life.

If you think 2857 is an exciting crowd for a brand new club when the novelty value is still there and if you think it's a viable crowd to run a SL club on then that's your view, but I judge all clubs by the same standard as expansion clubs are more likely to fold, not less, if things don't go to plan. It is clear that the higher crowds from the novelty value have dropped off due to the team losing every game.



And yes what happened in France isn't relevent as people actually want to watch Catalans and the club are actually good enough to win games in SL. As for London they actually started well, but noone wants to watch now they're Harlequins, but they certainly wouldn't have got a crowd this low in their first season. Either way the assumption that crowds in expansion areas go up over time is totally baseless and the limited information we have if anything suggests the opposite

depends how many are paying to get in at Brewery Field, Gateshead had a lot of freebies.

I think 8,007 at Warrington, 5,521 at Wakefield (against Wigan no less) and 4,165 at Salford should be a bit more of a concern than the attendance at Celtic.



All 3 of the above clubs have been around over 100 years, compared with the 3 years of Celtic, who started with no kind of history whatsoever.

[url=http://www.slstats.org/t44/Les%20Catalan%20Dragons/2006/Summary.htmlfirst year stats for the froggies[/url

6,542 average year 1.

In 2006 they never have a crowd below 4000 and have gone upwards from there.



Their lowest crowd was 4197 against Quins.

You can hardly blame folk for focussing on the area that the RFL have decided is the single most important area of assessment for clubs looking to renew their licence. At least 2, arguably 3, of the 10 criteria are directly related to attendance. Its naive to think in those circumstances discussion of attendance won't happen or indeed isn't valid.



It doesn't, of course, mean that the criticism is necessarily valid.

I think the point that the original poster was making was the fact that people were very quick on RLfans to jump at slating Salford's attendances... yet slow on the uptake of Celtics.



Salford haven't had much luck in the opening games to do anything to bump up the attendances.... of the 5 home games so far.... we played 2 of the 3 most poorly represented away followings with the visits of Celtic and Harlequins.... A decent crowd against Wigan.... A Good Friday game against a Warrington team who's following would have been much more should they have been winning (plus the weather was shocking)... and a game against Hull... when the Champions of Europe were playing round the corner at the same time... and Hull City were at home to Liverpool an hour or so earlier which I'm sure took a couple of hundred of their away following.



I'm not too worried about the attendances under the circumstances.

the acid test is the quins and Catalan game, could it be under 1000

Think you may need to check your facts...

Not really because the first one is easily high enough to run a SL club off, the second one probably is and the third one is borderline but not low enough that they're at risk of folding.

Celtic Crusaders v Harlequins Rugby League April 19th 2009.

Attendance 3,009. HTH