Congratulations to Catalan for their victory on Saturday, thoroughly deserved and what a great turnaround by McNamara and the side .It's difficult to believe that they are the same side that lost 8 from 9 games at the start of the season.
As a neutral, ti was an excellent game of RL, with Catalan dominating the early exchanges and Wire coming back strongly at the end and it looked for a while that we may have a draw, with Wire finishing strongly (apart from a bit of composure when it really mattered).
Gigot was superb but, I would have given Mcillorum the mom, he was superb.
The attendance overall was very poor for a showpiece event but, given the short time frame between the semi's and the final and with Catalan never likely to bring 10/15000 fans, this was always going to be the case.
I think it's time to accept that the Cup Final is no longer the major showpiece event that it once was and find a new strategy fo filing the ground, either by working with ALL clubs to sell more tickets in advance or possibly moving the date of the final, although this is no guarantee of changing the numbers attending the final.
Apart from having a new name on the trophy, which is always a good thing, the increased media exposure of having Les Cats winning has been excellent, something that we haven't seen for a number of years and it makes a change to be getting positive exposure for the sport form some quarters, where RL is usually sneered upon.
Great game and well done Catalan.