Quote langpark="langpark"You don't watch anything outside of English RL do you...
16th Oct: Scotland 26-6 Ireland
29th Oct: France 46 -10 Scotland...
This tournament, just going through each match and making conservative estimates, would total about 140,000 in 3 weeks. The Four Nations that is on now looks set to have an total gate of about 120,000 over 4 weeks...'"
140,000?!!! Would be very interested to know how you have come to this figure, especially using "conservative estimates".
Here are my estimates using your fixtures:
Week 1:
Aus vs Samoa @ the Stoop (5,000 at very best, based on past exhibition games at the Stoop, e.g. Quins vs NRL Champs)
NZ vs Wales @ Wrexham (10,000 at very best, based on capacity of the ground, which is being very generous)
England vs PNG @ Salford (12,000 at very best, based on past fixtures vs France/Wales at the end of the season)
France vs Ireland @ Avignon (14,000 at very best, based on last year's crowd for the same game)
Week 2:
Aus vs France @ Toulouse (14,000 at very best, based on 2009 Four Nations crowd there and adding a few more because it's Aus, but not taking into account slow ticket sales from not knowing if France will actually be in at this stage or not)
NZ vs England @ Hull (23,000 at very best, based on previous crowds for NZ at KC, and again not taking into account slow ticket sales from not knowing who will be in at this point).
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Wales vs Samoa @ Wrexham (4,000 at best, a nothing game and basing it on other low-level internationals in Wales)
Ireland vs PNG @ Halifax (3,000 at best, based on the last time Ireland played a game with actual meaning in West Yorkshire at Dewsbury, and taking away people for the fact that nobody knows who will be playing and that it's a nothing game)
Week 3:
Grand Final @ Huddersfield (20k if England aren't there at best, 23k if they are, based on the fact that Galpharm rarely sells out)
3rd place playoff @ St Helens (5k at best, a nothing game)
5th place @ Headingley (5k at best, a nothing game)
7th place @ Leigh (5k at best, a nothing game).
I've got 120k there just, and being very generous with some of the crowds.
I don't know where you got your 120k figure from for the 4N as well, but considering we're already at 23k at the moment, have sold over 41k at Wembley at the moment (so another 6k not out of the question), Eng/NZ and Wal/Aus likey to post 23k and 10k crowds at best (what I predicted for your idea), that means you think there will be less than 20k for the final? There was 26k there even when England didn't make it. 130-140k for 7 games is better than 120k for 12 games.
That's 5 extra venues and 4 extra teams to put up. The number of weeks is irrelevant if you've doubled the number of teams and made only half of the teams have more than one meaningful game.
And I'm not sure what your point is posting them two results? Are you trying to say it's not a very possible situation that Ireland could beat France? Let's look at how they did in the last World Cup...
Ireland - one win off the semis.
France - ranked the worst team in the competition.
I don't think I need to justify how much RL I watch outside of England on that basis (but I'll add I've just come back from a rugby league trip to Malta just for the sake of it
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