Mickey Rourke sprinkles stardust but few fans really believe in Magic

Magic or madness? Five years into Super League's on-the-road experiment, the jury is still out. For the vast majority of those who attend, it is a thoroughly enjoyable weekend. And while the gamble of bringing it forward from May to launch the season may have undermined the festival feeling in Cardiff city centre, it ensured more interest in each of the seven matches, with every team freshened up by a sprinkling of new players. But an aggregate attendance of 60,214, while better than in either of the last two years at Murrayfield, conceals the fact that most regular Super League supporters chose to stay at home in the north. That was good news for Sky's viewing figures – which are not insignificant in the last year of the current broadcasting deal – but not for the atmosphere in the stadium. The clubs are divided, with some of the heavyweights keen to retreat to more familiar and lucrative territory if a round of derbies is retained to launch the season with a bang. A double header of Wigan v St Helens and Warrington v Widnes, assuming the last-named club are promoted, could fill a north-west football ground such as Goodison Park or the Reebok Stadium and provide a closer equivalent to the Twickenham London Double-Header with which rugby union's Premiership has opened up in recent years. But that would do nothing for the expansion clubs who benefited most from the return to Cardiff. Harlequins seized the chance to show to a wider audience the progress they are making in London by beating the Catalans Dragons and the Crusaders relished their big day on Welsh sport's grandest stage, enjoying a 42-12 drubbing of Salford. It was a good weekend for Rob Powell and Iestyn Harris, Super League's rookie coaches, who face each other at the Stoop next Sunday. Nigel Wood, the chief executive of the Rugby Football League, concedes that the Magic experiment can still be acclaimed only as a qualified success. "I think it's looking pretty good for the continued existence of the event," he said. "We will consult, as we have done after every Magic Weekend, both with supporters and with broadcasters in a year of contract negotiations. But I think most people think that it has a lot to offer, and being the first weekend of the season has given it another dimension. "We've been able to launch the season with a bit of a bang and all 14 clubs have started at the same time, whereas in previous years we've had a staggered start. Rugby league supporters enjoy their relationship with Cardiff and it's one of rugby league's great strengths that we can bring them all together in one venue. The city centre has been a kaleidoscope of team colours on Friday and Saturday nights. That makes it a unique event in British sport." "It's certainly been good for us," said Harris, who grew accustomed to playing at a full Millennium Stadium as a Wales rugby union international but was anything but deflated by a view of banks of empty seats from his new position in the coaches' box. "Being based up in Wrexham now, this was our chance to show people down here that Wales has a decent rugby league team to support and I'm delighted with the way it went." Crusaders remain bottom of the Super League table, having won back only two of the four points they were deducted for entering administration in the off-season, but on this evidence they may yet be capable of repeating last year's surprise top-eight finish. Gareth Thomas had a solid game at right centre, in front of Mickey Rourke and Joe Calzaghe, who ensured that what the crowd lacked in quantity it made up for in star quality. The Hull KR director John Prescott completed an unlikely trio of heavyweights in the corporate area. Rourke became the first man since the Huddersfield scrum-half Danny Brough to force Sky to apologise for bad language during a rugby league broadcast and said that watching his first game live had confirmed how hard he is going to have to train with Calzaghe to bring the necessary integrity to his forthcoming portrayal of Thomas. The game has certainly changed since Richard Harris played Frank Machin in This Sporting Life, which has provided the inspiration for Rourke's project. Heaven knows what the likes of Machin would have made of the Magic Weekend.