THE idea that bad news is the most interesting and gets all the best headlines must be a welcome maxim to many rugby league fans.

Think about it.

On Saturday, we got the sort of Challenge Cup final most of us have been demanding; tough, exciting with a nail-biting finish and an historic result that made the game the lead sports news item on the BBC.

Catalan Dragons, a team some members of the rugby league “family” would rather not have around, had defied the odds and toppled Warrington Wolves.

The club that, just a year ago, came within 80 minutes of relegation and possible extinction had defied all the odds.

Yet one of the biggest talking points among the twittering classes was the size of the crowd and the number of shiny red seats that were empty.

There are so many rugby league fans obsessed with crowd figures that if they all bothered to turn up Wembley Stadium would not be big enough to hold them.

The official attendance of 50,276 – bettered on Saturday only by Premier League crowds at Arsenal and Liverpool – even prompted the ridiculous suggestion that the RFL should ditch Wembley as a Challenge Cup Final venue and move to another London venue.

There has been a variety of reasons given for the low figure, ranging from poor marketing, Bank Holiday weekend, Euston Station’s closure, the Dragons bringing only 5,000 fans from Perpignan - even the price of a pint.

Judging by the tears of joy among the players and fans – a soppy lot, aren’t they, the French? – this was an occasion to savour and to blazes with the doom merchants who would prefer to count empty seats than enjoy their sport.

However, half-empty Wembley was not the only place to find tales of woe.

For a whole week, the sports pages have been filled with speculation on the Old Trafford future of Jose Mourinho.

‘BATTLE TEARING UNITED APART’ was probably the most dramatic of the Sunday headlines, with talk of crisis, Jose and executive vice-chairman Ed Woodward at loggerheads, interference from former players such as Gary Neville and Paul Scholes, and Paul Pogba’s admission that the defeat at Brighton and Hove Albion was all down to his team having the wrong attitude.

The season is three games old and already managers Mourinho and West Ham’s Manuel Pellegrini are coming in for stick; Arsenal star Mesut Ozil is out of action “with a cold”, and Celtic and Manchester City are not top of their leagues.

Cheer up, there is plenty of good news about if you look hard enough. Watford are joint-top of the Premier League.

The Mail:

IT is amazing how a simple misprint can shatter your dreams.

Just when you thought things could not get any worse, they do – especially if you are a supporter of Fort William.

I did promise to keep you up to date on the latest trials and tribulations of The Fort, the Highland League’s least successful club.

After scouring my Sunday paper there it was in black and white: Fort William 2 Formartine United 0.

They had broken their duck against the team second in the league.

Victory at last, except it wasn’t. That nought should have been an eight.

And to make things even worse for the club, they are not only bottom of the league but they have also been docked nine points for fielding an unregistered player on three occasions, leaving them needing three wins just to get them back to zero.

Nearby Ben Nevis must look like a gentle uphill stroll compared with the mountain Fort William FC have to climb. Even a combination of Pep Guardiola and Jurgen Klopp would find the job too daunting.

The Mail:

ONE of them is said to be the first sportsman to earn more than a billion dollars, the other is reported to pick up a not-too-shabby $51million a year.

So a $9million pay day is little more than small change in the heady world of golf’s biggest box office attractions.

Tiger Woods, 42 – without a win since 2013 – and Phil Mickelson, 48 – with just one success in the same five years – are about to go head-to-head in a winner-takes-all challenge in Las Vegas in November.

It’s a pay-to-view event at the Shadow Creek Golf Club and is being hyped as the match to boost golf’s popularity among the young – with the players’ combined age of 90? – but in truth it is nothing of the sort, just as almost every boxing title bout is not ‘The Fight of The Century’.

Remember, these two have not exactly been bosom buddies down the years, but don’t expect sparks to fly or clubs to be hurled.

It will all be very calm and dignified and, unless I’m way off, pretty boring.

Four or more hours of watching the same two players tread the fairways is not your average golf viewers idea of good TV, especially two who are well past their best.

Golf events on TV are all about jumping from hole to hole, fairway to bunker to keep up with the leader board – not a two-man race with nobody else involved.

And this is a matchplay event, so even the winner may not have to burn up the course to pick up the $9million pin money.

If Tiger and Phil are still the biggest draw in the game even at their age, then isn’t that a problem for golf that needs to face?