Richard Hercock: Super League youngsters help turn on fans and TV audience

TO me, last weekend was the start of the summer season with some great games in Super League, the launch of the Championship and, even more importantly, the sun finally coming out in Yorkshire.

I was at Belle Vue on Sunday afternoon to watch Huddersfield Giants go top of Super League after victory over Wakefield.

The Giants set off like a steam train and at 18-4 you had to fear for the Wildcats. But Ben Cockayne’s hat-trick got them back in with a shout only for Kevin Brown to grab the game by the scruff of its neck and do what all good captains should do.

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While it did not match the intensity of Leeds v Warrington or the thrills of Hull KR v Bradford Bulls, being sat amongst nearly 10,000 at a sun-drenched Belle Vue was a pleasure.

It is encouraging, too, the wealth of young talent coming through and not just competing, but taking man-of-the-match plaudits. Huddersfield have youngsters like Leroy Cudjoe, Michael Lawrence and Jermaine McGillvary, and at Craven Park I was impressed with the Bulls’ John Bateman and Jason Crookes, who grabbed a hat-trick of tries.

Kallum Watkins and Zak Hardaker are just two of the young guns at the Rhinos, so it will be interesting to see how they all improve now the warm weather is, hopefully, here to stay and playing conditions improve.

After the first five weeks of Super League, attendances are almost 10 per cent up on the corresponding period last year whilst television viewing figures are at record levels.

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Take out the opening round of games, because last year there was the Magic Weekend which is not really comparable, and from rounds two to five, the number of people going through the turnstiles is on the rise.

The average aggregate crowd per round in 2012 is 67,331, a 9.67 per cent increase on 2011 when the aggregate stood at 61,399.

Couple that with new figures which show that more than one million people each week are tuning in to watch Super League on television, and the future certainly looks bright.

The average weekly audience for the 10 Super League matches shown live on Sky Sports and Sky Sports HD in 2012 is 33 per cent higher than the 2011 season average.

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The recent Friday night match between Castleford and Leeds attracted the biggest audience of the day on the channel.

Over 9,000 fans packed into the PROBIZ Coliseum, but there was a TV audience that was almost identical to that which tuned in to watch Leeds defeat St Helens in the 2011 Grand Final.

This week saw the RFL announce they had teamed up with American television network FOX Soccer Plus to screen matches to the USA until the end of 2014. FOX Soccer Plus, part of the FOX Sports Media Group, will broadcast tonight’s Super League match between Huddersfield and Castleford to more than 40 million cable and satellite households across America.

Throw in the Championships coverage on Premier Sports then the signs are that this could turn out to be a vintage year.