The Western Mail has again managed to outdo itself in poor journalism, this time with its efforts to cast light on poor attendances at the regions. Now don’t get me wrong, I do think things need to improve on that front, and in some cases rather drastically, but yet again the levels of investigation and consideration of all the facts leave a lot to be desired.

This is the artice that I am talking about.

Firstly let us look at what has to be the best line of the whole article…

A Western Mail investigation shows average attendance across the regional scene have been poor this season, with the Dragons (5,201), Scarlets (6,718) and the Ospreys (7,084) below the 8,000 mark.

Wow, what an investigation.  Bet it took them all of a few minutes to compile an average attendance.  Hell they are roughly the same as you get in a nice little drop down menu here – though that is just for the Magners League.

Consideration of Facts

But my main issue isn’t their claims of investigation, but that they fail to consider certain aspects and are just trying to create a story.  I am using the Ospreys here as I know their fixtures better than anyone else’s.

The Ospreys have, according to the Western Mail, an average of 7084.  That fails to take into account a couple of pieces of information

• The Ospreys are yet to play the big ‘crunch’ tie of the Heineken Cup – which is likely to get a bigger crowd than any other match in the cup.
• There are 9 home Magners League games a season, the Ospreys have played 5.  Whilst one of the remaining 4 is Connaught it should be noted that the other 3 are Welsh Derbies, traditionally the biggest home games of the season – and vs the Scarlets is often a sell out.

Now it seems to me that if you are going to make a comparison of average crowds at a mid point of the season you have to accept that there are in fact going to be a large difference between teams based on who has had what home games.

But in a rush to create an ‘expose’ they seem to have forgotten that.

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