Just been down to the ground as I have a couple of causal supporters with us tonight, purchased & picked up tickets for tonight's game. Although me & a group of supporters have a season ticket for the west stand we asked for unreserved seats in the east & actually watched the last home game from the east stand & enjoyed the view & certainly wanted to make our home in the east stand.
The reason for wanting unreserved seats in the first place was our group always as casual supporters with us. Unfortunately we have a seat number allocated in the west stand & friends we bring along now & again will now be elsewhere, this will not encourage new or casual supporter to come to the game unless the east stand is open & as friends we can enjoy the games together which is part of the crack.
I know we can stand behind the sticks but I only enjoy the game from the side, think again Salford you need to plan unreserved seating & ideally this should & could be in the east stand.
Finally I bet when we are on telly we will then be encouraged to sit in the east stand to make it look full.

Why not just find a block of seats with no one in them and sit together? It's not like the stand is sold out

East stand seems to be becoming quite popular for the casual fan. The unreserved seating aspect gives you the advantage of being able to wander in and get the best seats on the half way line, which are pretty much all taken in the West stand.

Thank Karlos13 you answered for me! I could pick a group of seats in the West stand only to be told by someone arriving later that I am sat in his seats! No let try & be logical lets have some unreserved seats.

I have also been reallocated new seats in the West stand due to the re-introduction of a new card & my 4 year old grandson is now completely in another section.

No worries I am leaning towards going in the east stand for a few games myself, especially with the stewards seemingly relaxed approach to people standing on the back row.

Pretty sad state of affairs. The players won't exactly get a boost walking out to the view of an empty stand, and it will hardly give a positive impression on Superleague Fulltime, Boots n All and the Superleague Show.

Just rip the seats out, make it a terrace, and if you want to close a stand, close the south one.

Just to add - will we be playing in front of two closed stands next week?

The non-opening of the East stand to me shows a complete lack of ambition on a match day. They clearly didn't cater for any kind of emergency opening of the stand due to the lack of stewards brought in for the day.... imagine... lets just imagine... 5,000 people had decided to go to the game last minute... New stadium... half of it closed... If the club don't give a rake of tickets out to local schools in the next week... I'll be massively disappointed.

apparently they could not afford to open the east stand though i think it more down to can not afford to man it, but the lights where all on and today all the external lights are on in the stadium. major teething problems from the management company, g4s etc parking is terrible you pay £50 a season to park an they try and put u on waste land right of the stadium.

issue with time getting out is down to the fact most want to go right to the motorway in the long run i think it would be better to direct all to irlam and turn round at the either the airfield or further down.

the north sand will not be required on friday for 10 fans
so why not open the east stand with offer of buy one get a 2nd ticket half price

as for the road out apart from a road over MSC, a roundabout is required at the Irlam exit from the ground
there is space to do it.

Can we just cut to the chase we want the east stand open because its unreserved seating which means people can sit at the front and people who want to stand can go to the back all this talk about school trips looking at the west stand around the edges there was a good hundred seats free stick them there.

When there is a demand for the east to be open I'm sure they will open it.

True it doesn't look good with one stand closed this week and undoubtedly two stands closed next week and I agree we need more attendees. but (and I am not one of them) what must Season Ticket Holders make of the constant dishing out of free tickets when they have paid for a full season yet it's possible for me to get in free every week?!

To increase the support base of the club is vital, but also probably THE most difficult thing to achieve , one way would be to have a winning team topping the league and getting trophies on a regular basis , but that is unlikely and still not a guarantee to increase your support

So, what can you do?
Lets look at what you have?

1, Relatively no money to spend
2, A team that will most likely finish in the bottom half of SL
3, A nice shiny new stadium ( although parts arent quite that ' shiny '

)
4 , A SL licence

So how can you best use the above to increase you support base?

You mention that free tickets would get abused? , true, if you dont control their usage properly, this you can do by only having them in the East stand , use your community dept, get into the schools around Irlam,Cadishead,Sale,Trafford and the other local area's

All tickets given out to be family tickets only, no kids no entrance, early entrance coupled with activities organised through the community dept, no transfers to the other stands , no alcohol sales in the ' family ' stand

Quite simply ' get them in ' , only then can you sell your club to them, you need to get them in in big numbers, its no good putting 200 in, get 1500 in all at one go, find cheap merchandise, t shirts , hats, bloody vuvuzelas if you have to and get them making noise, collect their ' data ' do this 3 times, 4 th game offer them all a cheap ticket, 20 quid for 2 adults and up to 4 kids

Show faith in your coaching staff, their ' remit ' should be attacking RL, even if it costs you the odd loss, their job is to , ' entertain ' as much as win , you cannot be relegated, use that fact especially at home matches

Continue to do this season upon season, there is no magic wand you can wave, only by taking risks, showing initiative and hard work will you get what you want, just having a team playing every other week is no longer enough

Odd as it sounds but thought the closed stand looked brilliant on Friday, nice to see the old banners up but thought all the advertising really made it stand out compared to when the first couple of games were held and it had nothing on it.

Agree with others that the design is flawed and that they really should have made that all standing and had the South stand a dedicated family stand, would have looked better for SKY and the corporate bods. Still though every time I go the new place is growing on me, no grotty lavs, no squeezing beer from cans, no mad rush to beet the stewards at half time and best of all an improving team on the pitch.

It really is daft when Warrington have the best layout for RL and their stadium was essentially the 1 st one built and yet others, including The LSV havent copied it

Good constructive post, Starbug - please submit your CV to the Marketing dept!

on check the tickets for sale on the club site
for the London game only the west and east are open
for the Leeds game all is open

It's West and South open for the London game.

A low interest game that you are well capable of winning , the perfect opportunity , if the will to make it happen was there ?

We seem to have more of a history of pushing to get a crowd in against the top teams, then getting battered on the pitch.

It would be a tall order for the community team to push 1500 tickets around the city in a week, don't you think?

Quote ="EX.SALF.UNI"It would be a tall order for the community team to push 1500 tickets around the city in a week, don't you think?'" Is it too much to ask that they could identify this fixture sooner and work on boosting the attendance? Someone has put a few extracts from the RFL's Operational Rules on the Virtual Terrace, with the following being rather interesting ahead of Friday: Attendances below 5,000 If for any reason a club can foresee any individual match attendance falling below 5,000 spectators, they should highlight this to the RFL Marketing department at least one month out from the fixture. The Marketing department will then work in partnership with the Club to explore all avenues to drive this attendance above the 5,000 threshold. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=520453 So either we're being optimistic and not expecting a sub-5,000 crowd, we have actually been working behind the scenes with the RFL to push the fixture (although I'd hope that would result in the East Stand being open) or we've not done what we should have. I'd hope and assume it's the middle one, to be honest.

Quote ="EX.SALF.UNI"It would be a tall order for the community team to push 1500 tickets around the city in a week, don't you think?'" Is it too much to ask that they could identify this fixture sooner and work on boosting the attendance? Someone has put a few extracts from the RFL's Operational Rules on the Virtual Terrace, with the following being rather interesting ahead of Friday: Attendances below 5,000 If for any reason a club can foresee any individual match attendance falling below 5,000 spectators, they should highlight this to the RFL Marketing department at least one month out from the fixture. The Marketing department will then work in partnership with the Club to explore all avenues to drive this attendance above the 5,000 threshold. viewtopic.php?f=2&t=520453 So either we're being optimistic and not expecting a sub-5,000 crowd, we have actually been working behind the scenes with the RFL to push the fixture (although I'd hope that would result in the East Stand being open) or we've not done what we should have. I'd hope and assume it's the middle one, to be honest.

See above post

Hmm... I don't know much about the working relationship but would a cry for marketing help contradict the sexy document that secured our franchise, that referenced estimated crowds (albeit external estimations)?

Maybe, maybe not, but if the mechanisms are there in place then why not use them? The RFL must expect that this will crop up from time to time, otherwise it would not be mentioned in their Operational Rules. Aside from London, it's only going to be a problem once or twice a season for most clubs, so I can't see it being a major issue if you do use it.

It'd be interesting to know what, if any, sanctions there are for having a sub-5,000 crowd when you've not flagged up the potential beforehand.