WHEN BIG IS NOT BIG ENOUGH FOR SOME

Negative reaction to the Challenge Cup Final attendance is unfair and misleading. The RFL should work with the NRL to make it bigger and better

It means more at Wembley. That’s the slogan that greets the press as they exit the lift and enter the media lounge at the national stadium. And Saturday just proved it.

Imagine if little old rugby league had not one but three club events every year that attracted crowds of around 60,000. Imagine if one was at the national stadium, 200 miles from the game’s heartlands. Imagine if it was screened live on BBC1 and covered by all the mainstream media. Imagine Super League clubs taking 20,000 fans to a game in London when they’ve also got trips to Las Vegas or Paris. That would be amazing wouldn’t it? What was that? It does?

Yes, Challenge Cup attendances are gradually declining, but when 5,000 is a decent attendance for some of our top flight teams, there can never be ‘ONLY’ 56,383 to watch a club rugby league match in this country. Just two other sports can do that. During the same heatwave afternoon, less than 10,000 were inside Dublin’s Aviva Stadium to watch Leinster’s URC semi-final and Wembley was far emptier for the Women’s FA Cup Final 24 hours later. Did anyone say Irish rugby union and women’s football are in crisis? Thought not.

The fact 6,000 Wigan fans are going to Paris next weekend and thousands of Hull KR fans are still recovering financially from their Vegas trip, would explain the lowest announced crowd figure between two English teams for 80 years, and why it dipped below the 61,500 average actual attendance since the RFL stopped counting the empty but theoretically sold Club Wembley seats in the ring of indifference (apart from the Covid-impacted years and 2022 at Tottenham).

Neutrals might flock to Magic now instead, but the pockets of Wakefield supporters and a phalanx from Whitehaven, was evidence that Wembley is still a lure for those who have given up waiting to see their own teams to play there. Given eleven clubs have reached the final in the last eight years, the absence of other Super League fans makes sense.

But moving from Wembley, which is relatively cheap, would be risky. Look no further than rugby union’s knockout cup for lessons in mismanaged decline. The RFU were filling Twickenham to its 75,000 gills most years, and still averaging 55,000 when they conceded the European Cup was now king, and moved their final from HQ. Crowds plummeted and it soon became a reserve team competition. Be careful what you wish for.

There was a huge amount of NRL merch being worn at Wembley: either London’s antipodeans were out in force or the NRL is really cutting through. Maybe both. And therein lies opportunity. RL Commercial’s deal with the FA is apparently for one Wembley event per year, so theoretically the RFL could take a Challenge Cup elsewhere if the Kangaroos return in 2029, host an NRL season-opening double-header in March 2028, or make it a triple-header with the Challenge Cup in May. Just do something.

The Challenge Cup Final remains an annual opportunity for our game to raise its hand, wave to the mass media and sporting establishment, and say ‘We’re still here, you know, and as exhilarating, innovative and terrifically belligerent as ever’. It’s also become a vital platform for the women’s game. As second row forward Eva Hunter seared away to score Wigan’s second try, roared home by the couple of thousand Cherry and White fans already in the ground, there were flashbacks to Offiah ’94 as the great man watched on from the Royal Box. Just as importantly, about 40 media were in place from the start, the largest ever to watch a British women’s match, according to one seasoned beat reporter.

By scoring the first try quadruple in a women’s final for a decade, Woman of Steel Hunter matched Leroy Rivett’s Wembley feat of 27 years ago. Their 54-6 victory prompts the question who on earth will lay a glove on Wigan, let alone stop them repeating a clean sweep? That can’t happen in the men’s game after their second half demolition of the world club champions, Matty Peet’s team defending like Arsenal and attacking like PSG.

It was the afternoon when Wigan’s diminutive stand off Jack Farrimond announced himself on the world stage, receiving the Lance Todd Trophy from the finest of all Wigan diddymen, Shaun Edwards. Last May, Farrimond, now 20, scored in his sole appearance for London Broncos, watched by a three-figure gate at Rosslyn Park. On Saturday he linked beautifully with his outside centre Keighran for an hour until being replaced  by Bevan French (who nearly scored with his first touch and did a minute later with his second) and looks set to follow Rob Burrow, Sean Long and Andy Gregory in the mini-maestro mould.

With teenage winger Noah Hodkinson – his name and haircut straight out of a 90s indie band – shining in his eighth senior game like it was his 80th, Wigan look set for another decade on top.

After the women’s match, I watched humbled Saints women hobble down the Royal Box steps, stopping to burst into tears and console each other; defiant Amy Hardcastle classily thanking spectators for their polite applause; Alyx Bridge pulling her silver medal out of its box, gazing at it in awe and proudly hanging it around her neck; Wigan’s Cumbrian captain Olivia Wilson cockahoop as she danced down the steps with the cup in one hand and a cold drink in the other. I don’t fancy telling tell them or Farrimond or Hodkinson it shouldn’t be at Wembley.