Why do Leeds have such poor away support? For a big city team they should be able to double their away following as well as generating 20,000 plus crowds at every home game. Are the marketing team not doing their jobs?

Whilst he appears to be fishing I will answer this properly.

Just talked about this on the VT. Too often the attendance thing is something thrown at the feet of the RFL and the same points are blamed.....league structure/meaningless games/playoff format/finishing position not important enough/quality of players.

But hardly ever have I heard anybody ask if the clubs themselves are doing enough to get backsides through the doors. It just seems nowadays the club tweet/put up on the website that the next home is against so and so this weekend, ticket cost £X amount, come turn up......it's all incredibly lazy by all clubs on the whole (Wigan tried harder for yesterday's game and it paid off) yet not a lot of finger pointing goes their way. I think the emergence and growth of social media has lead all clubs to become lazy in their marketing.

As for away support I think it's something that has happened across the board. IMO when I look at the away end at Headingley there doesn't seem to be the same amount turning up for most clubs as they were a few years ago. Considering 7 of Leeds' away games this year have been on Sky, if you go down that route of just staying at home to watch them then you've saved yourself a couple of hundred pounds there in ticket and travel money.

Because the regular season is seemingly irrelevant to the club

The finger definitely needs pointing at the clubs. I can't speak for everyone else, but Warringtons marketing is particularly poor. I never see anything around the town to promote matches, all I see is the twitter posts, which I could easily miss if they were posted at a time when I was busy. Clubs should do much more to market and promote the sport. I'm not sure why they don't really as it's them who would benefit.

If Leeds were to generate 20K plus crowds, it would only be at the expense of some other RL club. Aggregate attendances in RL have hardly altered during the past 50 years. The only difference is that since 1996, SL attendances account for a much higher percentage of the total at the expense of the rest of the game outside of the top echelon.

Let me illustrate with an example.

During SL's best ever attended season of 2012, the aggregate attendance throughout the game was as follows:

[u2012 season[/u
Super League= 1.95 million
Challenge Cup = 211k
Championship 1 & 2 = 191k
National Rail Cup = 39k
TOTAL = 2.4 million

[u1989/90 season[/u
Division 1 = 1.18 million
Division 2 = 516k
Challenge Cup = 286k
Regal Trophy = 190k
Premiership Trophy = 118k
Yorks Cup = 107k
Lancs Cup = 79k
TOTAL = 2.5 million

Were Leeds to average 20K instead of their current 15k (which is based upon a period of consistent success BTW), it would be at the expense of other local RL clubs not doing quite so well, and whose attendances would drop by a combined total of around 5k.

Rugby League doesn't really know how to expand beyond either it's geographical boundaries or, more importantly, it's core Irn Bru, Foxy Bingo, Payday loan and Poundshop demographic. RL clubs always expand at the expense of neighbouring clubs as the bandwagoner elements migrate accordingly.

Leeds did average 17.5 K in 2007 and kept over 17000 for about 3 seasons i thought at the time I don't think they can keep this figure long term.We had quite a few capacity games in that period The bulls fixture at that time was a guaranteed 22k.

[uLeeds home attendances 1994/95 to 2014[/u
94/95 - 187,440/15 = 12,516 =#FF0000*
95/96 - 115,945/10 = 11,594
1996 - 94,395/11 = 8,581
1997 - 121,078/11 = 11,007
1998 - 133,801/11 = 12,164
1999 - 202,232/15 = 13,482
2000 - 177,435/14 = 12,674
2001 - 180,330/14 = 12,881
2002 - 170,193/14 = 12,157
2003 - 179,884/14 = 12,849
2004 - 224,390/14 = 16,028
2005 - 238,619/14 = 17,012
2006 - 219,478/14 = 15,677
2007 - 228,259/13 = 17,558
2008 - 221,555/13 = 17,043
2009 - 205,058/13 = 15,774
2010 - 199,619/13 = 15,355
2011 - 196,192/13 = 15,092
2012 - 194,320/13 = 14,948
2013 - 197,556/13 = 15,197
2014 - 195,880/13 = 15,068

=#FF0000* Leeds actually pulled in an extra 94,370 fans at Headingley from cup games and a tour match against the touring Kangaroos in 1994/95 taking the aggregate for all competitions to 282,110 at an average of 12,266. A Challenge Cup game against Workington claimed an attendance of 15,452. A similar fixture would struggle to draw half that figure these days.

Not difficult to work out when all the bandwagoners jumped aboard. Not difficult to work out when a fair few buggered off too

Considering the worst league campaign since 1996, comparing this year with 96, kind of makes a mockery of your agenda.

Also the little example of comparing to 89/90, why not just stick to the league games. It is more meaningful, and gives a completely different result to the one you are trying to portray.

I'd stick to being an apologist for serial miscreants if I were you.

You're way out of your depth here.

Love it when William gets all Keyboard Warrior on people. You better do what he says Gotcha and stick to other subjects or t'old Willy will make you pay for disobeying his commands.

I know, it's quite sad really what he has become. Poor imitation of his old self. Has nothing these days