IMO the magic weekends have gone Cardiff>Manchester>>>>>Edinburgh

Even though I thoroughly enjoyed the weekend and obviously the result on Saturday I've got to agree with Sandra. The hour gaps between the games on the Saturday were annoying although they were due to the training pitch near the stadium being unavailable for warmups on the Saturday. There wasn't any time to go anywhere useful other than Asda and there should have been a big effort in Piccadilly Gardens or Spinningfields with screens, Fanzone nonsense, ticket sellers and shuttle buses to the stadium. If it stays in Manc hopefully the Metrolink will be up and running next time.



You wouldn't have guessed it was going on at all until you got to the Etihad - no banners or posters or anything on the "citywalk" from Piccadilly, this was extremely poor compared to cardiff where the whole place seemed to be at least aware it was going on - bars welcoming fans, people selling scarves and other super-league team coloured tat down in the city centre.



The Millenium is also right in the centre of Cardiff so is far easier to pop out to a bar or pub in gaps between games and because its a bit further away people went for the whole weekend.



The 63000 combined crowd of the weekend to me is a good headline figure but I would be far more interested in finding out how many went to one day only (or even just their teams fixture) and how this compared to Cardiff. It was very telling and noticeable on the Saturday that all the Warrington fans disappeared after their game and on the Sunday all the Leeds fans left after their game and didn't bother watching the subsequent matches.