Sir Mike Gooley has put his heart on sole into Ealing and no doubt has legacy plans . . . but with the crowds they get not many current Premiership clubs are going to want them in the Cabal!

I have no doubt that Caldy would have got over 2000 if they had been playing at home during the Festive period.

There are other teams in the lower leagues consistently getting bigger crowds than Ealing. I cannot believe that just by getting in the Premiership their crowds will grow. That said they deserve a crack at the Premiership but to what purpose?

This is not an attack at Ealing but I just dont see the sense in the current model, if it were any other type of business the doors would have closed long ago or they would be a good local club playing at the appropriate level.

I really don't get the need for the constant digs at Ealing. They've got a business plan, and at the moment it's working. Their performance on Saturday shows that they are the best side in the league, and they deserve a crack at the big boys. Whether that business model is sustainable in the long-term is questionable, but Mr Gooley appears to have put plans in place to ensure the financial stability of the club once he is bo longer around. Of course there will be future challenges - it reminds me of Cecil Duckworth, and we all know how that ended up - and the lack of crowds is a concern, but we've always known that the market for rugby in London, and West London in particular is saturated. It's why Wasps moved away 20-odd years ago, and nothing has changed since. The one thing that might work in their favour is the complete overhaul of the top flight in two years' time, which might change the way the professional game is run, administered, marketed and promoted. In many way they're no more (or less) sustainable than any of the remaining Premiership clubs, so why shouldn't they be able to continue as long as the bills are being paid?

Our best supported team, Bedford Blues  ( usually 2,000 to 3,000 ) is way off the amount of supporters to be a Premiership side. I attended a London Irish v Exeter game and the crowd was 11,555  ☆ ( previously  posted incorrect figure of 14,000 )That half filled the London Irish stadium, one end and one side with the rest unoccupied.

I think Ealing if they do enter the Premiership will be over run by visiting supporters.

When was that game No7? I see the Irish/Chief match in Jan of this year got a crowd of 11,555. The capacity of the new ground in Brentford is 17,250, according to Wikipedia

At The Pirates it's the well known saga over the stadium which has held us back for years. That seems to be fading away unfortunately so the future is uncertain for us. Without Mr Evans we wouldn't have ever got to the Championship and we long term supporters have a had a blast over the past 20 years. Now things are different and promotion to the Prem doesn't look so attractive any more. Whether Championship rugby is sustainable in the long term if we remain in Penzance (which looks likely now) is another conundrum. 

What are you basing the Bedford have very few away supporters comment on? I would be surprised if we don’t have the largest away travelling support in the league. We take at least one full coach to every game. When we played Ealing away in the cup semi a few years back, it was like a home game. For our home games, it feels like Pirates have the largest contingent but maybe they’re just the loudest!

Always is a long time.

Crowds in the 1880 were large, especially for Yorkshire Cup games.

The Yorkshire Cup Final was often better attended than the FA Cup final

But they were the only competitive games, there was no TV or Radio - though there were apparently what are now called "fan zones" where those unable to attend had the score relayed to them by telegraph.

I am just reading Tony Collins' book Rugby's Great Split. Great read.

I have a different take on this. Rugby is a sport and to be a Premiership team you should only need to be one of the best dozen (or how ever many are in the league at the time) in the country.

If a club can achieve this with gates of 2,000 or even far less than that then they should be in the top division. Of course their ground should be safe for spectators  but that should be true of which ever league they are in.

It's time we started to look at rugby as a sport again and not a business.

I tend to agree although in general the higher up your team in the league set-up the greater the attendance.

Bournemouth were sustainable in the football Premiership on crowds of 14 thousand or so.

Over 2000 at Redruth v Camborne on Boxing Day, doesn't make either team a Championship club though.

Didn't I read that Blues / Amps were 5,000 last week at Goldington Road?

The crowds are there, it just needs something special to drag them out of their armchairs!

Boxing Day for the Blues is always a big money day!

This is where the league has changed for the worse, as before you would either get a Boxing Day game or one on or near to New Years Day, so all clubs had one home and one away game so could benefit from a bumper gate.

Saracens are not called Barnet

Quins are not called Twickenham

London Irish are not called Brentford

Wasps are not called M1/M45 or currently 'Solihull ????'

You’re quite right on one thing - Saracens are named none of these things; just an 800 hundred year old somewhat ra*cist epithet. Oh dear…

Leicester, Northampton, Bath, Exeter, Sale, Newcastle, Worcester, Gloucester.........locations

So by that token:

London Ealing / London Saracens / London Quins / London, London Irish / London NOT London Wasps

Three of those four would have had a number of name changes in recent years if they were named after their location.

That was before ringfencing-in-all-but name reduced the number of teams eligible for promotion through rules primacy of tenure, ground capacities of 10,000 plus etc. All conveniently applied to clubs seeking promotion but not those already in the top tier.

So in recent years the Championship title race has usually been a foregone conclusion, everyone knowing that the newly relegated team complete with P-shares and parachute payment will run away with the league. If anyone else had the temerity to mount a challenge, they were not eligible for promotion anyway. Those who tried to break in (i.e. London Welsh) were doomed by the rules they had to comply with, so no one much wanted to follow their example.

If most exciting thing about any league is who will win the title/be promoted, then there was boredom built in to the very structure of the Championship. And they wondered why attendances were so low.

In the event that the artificially steep step up to the premiership was smoothed, for example by allowing a ground capacity of 5,000, including temporary stands, more clubs might see top tier rugby as a realistic prospect and there could then be a genuine promotion race involving four or five clubs with a chance of promotion. I suspect that in such circumstances Championship attendances would be rather higher than they are now.

There you have it in a nutshell. When Pirates were in a couple of play-offs (remember them?) our crowds were up in the 2/3 thousand for the big games. When we had a proper cup competition (The B and I remember that?) we sold out the Camborne ground weeks before the final. The powers that be seem to have been deliberately sidelining Championship clubs by introducing a meaningless cup competition, doing away with play-offs and making it virtually impossible for the top team to be promoted (unless it's the relegated Prem team).  If you don't have meaningful matches many punters will not bother to turn up. Add to that the savage cutting of funding and it's plain that, for most clubs, it's a massive struggle just to keep going. 

One of the matches you mention is among the oldest surviving match reports on the Reds' website... it was quite a day

https://www.jerseyreds.je/match_report/loughborough-students-h-nat-2-play-off-28-05-11/" rel="nofollow - https://www.jerseyreds.je/match_report/loughborough-students-h-nat-2-play-off-28-05-11/

I think we had over 3500 for the visit of your own team the following season.  A crucial game at that point in the season where RP were going well too.

DMP had over 5000 for their two end of season games against Macclesfield and then a play off against Apmthill to get into National 1!!

But I think to get back to thread, yes I do hope Ealing get their shot at the Premiership and realise one mans dream but if they fail to garner any support I am not sure really what they are achieving!!?

https://www.jerseyreds.je/match_report/rosslyn-park-h-14-01-12/" rel="nofollow - https://www.jerseyreds.je/match_report/rosslyn-park-h-14-01-12/

And yes I think 3,600 is a league record. With the various containers/toilets/bars installed since then, we'd have a job squeezing that many in these days. There were 3,300 there when we beat Irish in March 2017...

Some nostalgia about the Reds squad being entirely 'local' back in the day - in reality it was more mixed eg for that Loughborough game in 2011 about a third of the 20-man squad were born-and-bred here, another third came to Jersey for mix of work & rugby, while the remaining third moved specifically as pro rugby players.

This issue of promotion and relegation is so vital to generating crowds.

In the Pirates play-off final season that Stalwart refers to earlier, it wasn't really the final that Pirates will remember, as we were, to be fair, well beaten by London Welsh in Oxford. They were a very useful side, and our people were fairly tired and downbeat after losing the home leg too, and just to make everything worse, in the days before the final Cornwall Council had unilaterally announced their withdrawal of support (again!) for the stadium project. So it was a fairly gloomy set of Pirates and supporters who trekked up to Oxford, and the right side won comfortably.

But all Pirates supporters will remember a semi-final match. With a sellout of the Mennaye, and with Sky and all in attendance, the Pirates gave the red-hot favourites for promotion - Bristol - an absolute lesson in fast open running rugby. We all found it difficult to believe, and even the Sky commentators couldn't really believe what they were seeing. But it only mattered because promotion hung on it.

The playoffs were great and did keep interest to the end, Donny were so close that year.

At the time the population of Ampthill was circa 6,000, the place was a ghostown that day as around one third of the town travelled... 

The 2015 National 2 promotion playoff game against Bishops Stortford saw a home crowd in excess of 2,500, many of whom wore Bedford colours! Of course, for reasons not unconnected with HMRC crowd numbers were notoriously difficult to confirm 

Would that the suits who run the RFU fiefdom understood that passion drives attendance, not toilets 

2.30pm on a Friday - I think that's not a bad turn-out...

MK is fifteen miles from Bedford. The Hockey team plays in English League, second tier like Bedford and Ampthill.

He mentioned the attendance about 2,500, similar to Bedford, more than Ampthill.

They don’t let people bring in drink or food (as a diabetic I carry water with me, never been stopped at Bedford). I tend to buy a coffee at a game.

Milton Keynes biggest sports team is MK Dons.

Bedford are the biggest sports team in Bedford.

So this talk of attendances, are any clubs in the Championship attracting the crowds they should?

Has it helped clubs having so many changes to the league?

I don’t know how Ice Hockey is marketed, but Planet Ice who own/run many ice rinks are a league sponsor, so I can imagine a lot of marketing at their venues.

I feel weather it’s clubs themselves or the RFU who wanted The Championship that it has been undervalued.

Edit

Just checked, official capacity at MK Arena is 2,200 but sounds like it sells out or close to capacity

AFAIK MK Lightning play at Level 1 (Elite League) and average around 1460.

No they were relegated in  2019.

It is called trying to get perspective.

Sure we can say which club in Championship has what crowd. But if (from a Bedford/Ampthill view in particular) another second tier team in another sport can attract 4 figure crowds is an insight into the larger world.

I still believe Rugby Union at this level has lost its way, more from HQ than clubs, can it attract more support? What can it learn from other sports? 

Football at second tier in England is one of Europe’s best supported leagues and we can’t compare to that, and IMO shouldn’t. But lessons might be there elsewhere.

Quite.

Just got my tickets for the April game ,Jersey Reds v Ealing  Trailfinders, league return fixture. Book quickly if you are going they are in demand. Seated near the half way line, £ 19 each .......bargain.

Yes but would you want to be French? 

You really like this country??

Of course, we have warm beer and cricket when rugby players take time off.

I got mine today as well + 4 others . Looks like there’ll be at least 6 of us 😂😂😂🇳🇬🇳🇬

Where did I say that?

If that's how you feel Geoff, fair enough.  I'm proud to be British and even prouder to be Cornish!

Nice one.

Just to confirm: Reds v Ealing on 22/4 will now KO an hour earlier, at 2pm. This increases options for day-trips, with flights after the match to Southampton and LHR. Alho' seems a shame to come all this way and not make a weekend of it.