Wigan and Huddersfield ran out at Murrayfield for their clash on Sunday in front of a half-empty stadium

By Ged Scott BBC Sport at Murrayfield

Nobody could ever accuse the Rugby Football League of not being proactive in its attempts to broaden the popularity of their sport.

What was once a winter pastime now stretches all summer long from February to October, is no longer confined to the traditional heartlands of Yorkshire and Lancashire and, since the inception of the new, improved Super League 14 years ago, is played out to the deafening backdrop of an almost constant thumping musical beat.

Murrayfield's Magic Weekend encompasses the business of a sport trying its hardest to sell itself to its public. No off-field gimmick is left unused in a bid to keep the crowd fully entertained.

But there's only one thing that matters, as far as the nation's sporting entrepreneurs are concerned, and that's bums on seats, as they say at Headingley.

And a freezing couple of days at Murrayfield watched by only 52,043 fans over the two days - a discouraging drop of over 10% on last year - has left the distinct impression that it's time the RFL got its magic wand out again and conjured up something new.

Lovely place though Edinburgh is (and expensive too!), nobody expects this two-day event to be back in the Athens of the North next season. And the big question for the RFL, after another year of falling attendances, is whether it takes the Magic Weekend anywhere else.

There's certainly nothing very magical about being anywhere when it's too cold, which, let's face it, Edinburgh was all weekend BBC Sport's Ged Scott

Newcastle maybe? Dublin? Back to Cardiff? Or simply to abandon the idea altogether and come up with another marketing concept, staged in mid-summer when it's likely to be a bit warmer.

While there is nothing much the organisers could do about the weather, they might have done better to avoid a clash with Sunday's Edinburgh Marathon which, for those with city centre hotels, involved being out of one's bedroom by six o'clock in the morning to avoid having your car effectively besieged for the next few hours by traffic restrictions.

And there's certainly nothing very much magical about being anywhere when it's too cold, which, let's face it, Edinburgh was all weekend.

An event like this needs the added attraction of a bit of sun on people's backs to help put smiles on faces when the rugby's not so hot. And it was not until seven o'clock on Saturday night, when Leeds and Wakefield Trinity put on such a thrilling spectacle, capped by a dramatic finale, that Murrayfield came anywhere near to life.

By then, there were over 26,000 in the stadium. But that merely begs the age-old question... is a stadium half-full or half-empty? And for too much of this weekend it simply felt half-empty.

It is not even as if, for those league fans who enjoy more than just the game itself, that there are not other opportunities to spend a weekend of drinking and watching.

With the Super League empire now so far flung, there are weekends in London and the south of France to be enjoyed for the meetings with Harlequins and Catalans.

And then there's still always the annual Wembley experience, which has always attracted far more than just fans from the two teams who actually make up the Challenge Cup Final.

But being here in Scotland really does not seem the place for rugby league.

In the unfailingly cheery man on the public address system's build-up to day two, before introducing the half-decent in-house rock band (but whose name I have already forgotten and did not, I have to admit, rock me to my "very foundations" as promised), he assured us that rugby league had really captured the public's imagination north of the border.

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There were, after all, apparently more than 5,000 Scots among the 59,749 who turned up for last year's event. But that did not compel the Scottish media to treat the event with any level of seriousness.

The Scottish Sunday papers did not carry even a line on it, which is astonishing given that there were more at Murrayfield than there were at Parkhead and, on a day when both Celtic and Rangers were playing at 3pm on a Saturday for the first time this season, rugby league was responsible for Scotland's best-attended sporting event of the weekend.

The RFL should never be knocked for its imagination.

After all, it has long since been proved to be market leaders in the sports world for trying new things. It remains a shining example to other sports when it comes to innovation.

Who really predicted the success of rugby league as a summer sport?

Then there's successful innovations like rolling substitutes and, especially, video replays, which football still remains unshakably reluctant to follow.

The RFL even has the guts to play old Showaddywaddy hits when a team scores a try, contrasting nicely with the odd snatch of Elgar for those rare moments when it senses the public's ears need a bit of soothing.

But it has to be asked - whether Cardiff, Edinburgh, Newcastle, or wherever they choose next, and at whatever time of year - does rugby league really need its Magic Weekend?

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