Headingley Carnegie Stadium is set to welcome thousands of new faces this Sunday for Leeds Carnegie's clash with Saracens in the Guinness Premiership, kick off 3pm.
Hundreds of families and students will be attending their first game of rugby union and making their first visit to Headingley Carnegie Stadium thanks to a number of promotions that have been taking place over the past weeks and months.
The Headingley Carnegie Rewards scheme has been running for over a year now as a partnership between Leeds Rugby, Yorkshire CCC and Leeds Met. Season ticket holders and members of all three sporting clubs along with staff and students at Leeds Met are part of Headingley Carnegie Rewards which offers benefits all year round. For the Saracens game there has been a ticket promotion for Rhinos and Yorkshire CCC members to come and join us on the day which has proved extremely popular.
Likewise, this has seen the Freshers Festival go into full swing at Leeds Met as all the first year students arrive on campus. The opportunity to see world famous rugby players on their own doorstep has proved very popular and thousands of students have taken up the offer to support Leeds Carnegie this week.
Last week, Leeds Met welcomed their international students. Hendrie Fourie and Alberto Di Bernardo came to support the event at the  Headingley campus. Michael Gray, Head of Marketing and Director of the Headingley Carnegie Partnership commented, "Hendrie and Alberto were fantastic ambassadors for Leeds Carnegie, speaking to students from all around the world. They encouraged students to come to the Saracens game and hundreds of international students will be with us  on Sunday, many seeing Rugby Union for the very first time. This week we have been encouraging freshers from across the region to support Leeds Carnegie and we expect a large crowd lifted by their attendance."
Leeds star and former Leeds Met student Rob Vickerman thinks the attraction of watching Leeds Carnegie in the Guinness Premiership will be a massive hit with the student population, he added, "You have got the chance to come and see the best players in the world on your own doorstep, if I was a student in Headingley I would definitely be banging on the door. Then once they have come down here, we want to them to form ties with the club so they become lifelong fans, it is a great recipe and I am sure it will work.
"I was fortunate enough to be in the Lewis Jones Suite for the Gloucester game and the feeling in the ground was brilliant. I have only seen that a couple times for Rugby Union games at Headingley Carnegie. I was in the crowd for the games against Newcastle and that feeling was also there when we played the crunch games against Quins and Rotherham but it's not very often. When I was walking around the ground there was a buzz in the air. A lot of credit must go to the guys behind the scenes who worked so hard to get a crowd like that. Hopefully, everyone will get the bug and will be back, I know all my family have been bitten!"