Day of the final at least BBC Breakfast are bigging it up today. Since 6.30am been main sport on sports news and on weather forecast. Mike Bushell long been an RL fan - good to see enthusiasm from him and he said he was in awe of having the Challenge Cup in the studio with all the history of RL it symbolises. Studio interview with Robbie Paul. When Robbie commented on 90,000 northerners being there Mike corrected him with a lot of interest from southerners as well. Good on yer Mike!

I’m sick to death of this illusion that only people in the north care about rugby league. I remember going on holiday in 1998 and a southerner told me how he supported the Bulls and how lots did down south. Just because there’s no big club down south (apart from Harlequins but there as heartland to me now as Yorkshire and Lancashire are) it doesn’t mean there’s no fans.

In London there’s a lot of Cockneys who support Leeds United simply because of how awesome Leeds was as a city and a club back then. In Leeds we have a lot of American football fans.

Its an absolute illusion that there’s little interest in rugby league down south. Its just that certain corporate interests have a perverse view of what ‘interest’ should mean.

I’m probably getting a little bit too excited but America has New York like the way England has Leeds.

Our supposable capital cities suck badly don’t they?

That's why it was a bit disappointing for Robbie to say what he did but at least Mike Bushell corrected him.

For 'southern' enthusiasm you need to look no further than Clare Balding this afternoon

Fair play to Robbie Paul, whose been on the media circuit for so little time. Hopefully he’ll learn from this mistake and stop been so ignorant about rugby league outside, lets face it - super league.

Spot on about Clare Balding.

To be fair the vast majority of today's attendance will be from the North, lets not kid ourselves.

Would be interesting to see some facts backing that up, not sure if it's ever been studied?

I’ll just count how many people look northern like me today in the crowd..

I can remember reading somewhere that Super league on skysports is the 3rd most watched sport (behind soccer and wwe) and has higher viewing figures down south then it does on the m62 corridor.

So the 2nd most watched sport then ............



I've also read that RL is one of the most watched sports on Sky, and I guess the fact that the largest viewing numbers are down south is due to the distribution of subscribers.

90,000 capacity
25,000 from L**ds
25,000 from Warrington
15-20,000 other Rugby fans from the heartlands

15, maybe 20,000 from "elsewhere"

I've seen that 3/5 to 2/5 South-North divide on the Sky viewing figures.

Good to see the BBC sports fella correcting what was a jokey throwaway comment from Robbie Paul at 7.30 in the morning.