Just thought I would share some graphs with you that I've been putting together.
The first (round by round comparison) is a running round by round comparison of every season since 2003 and what the round average was. Plenty of people say that the average drops around Origin time so I figured I'd graph them to see by how much but the graph shows a few other interesting things.
First up the season does follow a fairly strong seasonal pattern with a big open to the season, followed by 6 or 7 very strong rounds before the round averages start to fall off. They then range from about 12 to 17 thousand a round before picking up around round 20 for a big finish to the season in the build up to the finals. None of this is really surprising but for the fact that, except for a few exceptions, the season does tend to react fairly consistently regardless of who is playing who, especially in more recent seasons.
But the exceptions...
1. Perhaps the most interesting figure is how close the various opening rounds are. With the season average generally moving upwards the opening rounds have been practically the same since 2004. It's a bizarre pattern and will be interesting to see if it continues.
2. As the graph shows, a round average of 12,000 is a significant minimum for the game. Anything below this you could probably classify as a 'disappointing round'. It happened 3 times last year but 2 of those were the rained-out rounds of 13 and 14, while I cant remember what was going on in the same rounds of 2006. Those results seem to be a bit of a coincidence that makes the mid season collapse look a fair bit worse than it really is and, with a bit of luck, we shouldn't have to worry about them this year however we almost skirted the sub 12,000s last round with all the 'collapsing clubs' bad publicity so maybe the poor crowds could be seen as a normal cycle, not the death of rugby league as we know it (although if the media keeps scaring people away it may be a self fulfilling prophecy).
3. Round 7 was an extraordinary mid-season round this year with nothing coming close to it in the last 5 years. This from the game that is dying! With results like this to bolster the bottom line, this year only needs to avoid the bad weather to give the 2005 record a good shake.
4. The later seasons are more consistent than 2003/4. If you take those two seasons out the trend (except for rounds 13 and 14) become a lot clearer, especially over the last few rounds of the season. I think that bodes well for clubs as it suggests a much greater consistency and stability that is developing in crowd attendances and that more regulars showing up to games more consistently.
5. 2005 was an extraordinary year with consistent results across the board. For a better look there's my next graph.....
The other graph (running average) plots the running season average as it changes over the season. This graph is interesting as it shows how the yearly average is affected by the mid season leveling out of crowd averages as well as showing just how much improvement is being seen year on year in the NRL.
It also better illustrates just how consistent 2005 was with the big drops of round 13 and 14 knocking 2006 and 2007 out of the race for the record fairly early in the season.
Another interesting thing is the effect of this years round 7- the average actually went up in mid-season! Unfortunately though the rounds following it were quite poor with last round seeing us drop below 2005's trend. Hopefully with some good weather and some more block buster rounds we can see it level off healthily and then pick up come round 18/19 like it has done in previous years so we can give that record a shake.
Hopefully the files can be seen clearly (if not, please help
) and give some interesting viewing for the crowd watchers among us.
Credit has to go to Timmah for the figures for this years averages (straight from this thread), as well as the crowd figures I got from *Paul*'s spreadsheet linked on 'Crowd Watch 2007' thread.
