No it does cause me problem,but like I have said Mr Tarry had a office of is own at Barton.
I would think the new gaffer would be in that office,and I would hope that person is from outside the organisation.
Just my opinion.

Presumably you never criticise the government of the day because you can't possibly know the intricacies of every single decision they make? You talk some rubbish.

Dave Tarry was a terrible CEO and we're infinitely better off without him. If there are people on here who can't see that then I'd suggest they don't know their from their elbow where Salford RLFC is concerned.

Even the normal club stooges on here haven't offered their forthright support of him.

Well Walshy I presume I am one of the stooges you refer to but my support is the Board as a whole - or more pointedly the Directors who have financially kept the club alive for 30 years.

I have never been a fan of Tarry at all and I am pleased to see him elsewhere.

Fella he's so wrapped up in it a tramp could keep warm in winter.

But surely you can accept that it is possible to a) Support and praise the board for the financial contribution they have made over the last 30 years and b) Question the poor decision making of those same people over the same period. These are not mutually exclusive positions. The board could have spent far less than it has if better decision making had been in operation throughout those years.

You've just proved that very point yourself by saying you support the board but don't like Dave Tarry, in essence saying the board has had someone occupying one of, if not, the biggest roles at the cub for 30 years that was poor at his job. By analogy this shows the decision making process at the top of the club clearly went awry on this issue.

Another glaring example is the 4.5 year contract given to McRae - an appalling waste of money that cost us immeasurably an almost all fronts. That decision has never been justified by whoever made it.

PS I'm happy to be corrected on this but I don't recall you voicing much concern over David Tarry on this forum while he was in office, which I find peculiar if you've never been a fan of his.

Matter of conjecture isnt it as neither of us in a close enough position to comment.

My own view and I know its shared by others is that maybe JAW is too loyal and maybe too close to some of the staff around him and the independent strategic review will certainly have emphasised that situation. He needs more `quality` back up staff.

Re McRae - totally agree there and it has cost us immeasurably in my view too.

JAW is Captain of the Ship and its his loot which has kept it afloat so we all have to accept his decisions whether they are right or wrong.

Maybe after the strategic review we will see a new properly qualified CE inserted. I just feel that DT has been one of the luckiest men in the world to have been in such a sheltered position for the past 30 years.

So because he's keeping the club afloat we should all stand idly by and watch him make decisions that could be to the detriment of the club without saying anything?

Putting money into any club or business does not equal the right to make poor decisions without being questioned. Especially when better decision making could have cost Salford and, indeed, JAW, less money over the years.

I am sure the review highlighted the fact that the CE role obviously changed since the move to Barton. I would imagine the position at the Willows was more justified with the Stadium Management duties that don’t exist anymore.

I think the review would have recommended the need for putting the clubs off-field resources into recruiting a professional and experienced sales/marketing person(s).

The new stadium will have changed the whole off-field organisation into solely a PR, Sales and Marketing operation.

When you have control of any company as JAW does with Salford you can do what you like. You know that as well as me. Its a democratic Country so if you wish to voice your concerns then you should write to him.

You seem to be suggesting that we shouldn't be able to challenge the decision of the person who owns our club [ibecause[/i they own it. Very strange outlook indeeed.

I agree wholeheartedly on Tarry getting with murder for 30 years.

Wigan, Bradford, Huddersfield and London have CEO's but don't own stadiums so what do they do?

I really don't know but the CEO at Bradford doesn't appear to have set the world on fire in recent times. Perhaps some other CEO's are more commercially minded or maybe some clubs have the luxury of being able to afford them in these tough economic times? Or maybe it's to tick a licensing box?

And presumably you always think their replacements can only improve matters?

Of course. As does anyone not towing the 'blame someone' line on here. Thank f--k for voices of reason like yours, speculating with an in-the-know tone.

Well there you have it. I don't know if he worked miracles keeping us ticking over with a limited budget or spent his time chuckling into a moustache comb, counting wads of pilfered cash.
I just don't believe you (and others here) know a great deal more than I do. Hope you're right, I'm just struggling to accept a management redundancy as the best news in 30 years.

Really? Well I feel utterly foolish now. It's almost as if I projected an opinion of my own! Will I get banned for that??

There's plenty of people who've had meetings with Tarry over the years who've come away with a really poor impression of the man and the job he's done. I know someone who met him and came away astounded at how much he blamed on other people, there was always an excuse or reason as to why the man supposedly at the top could not take responsiblity for what was going on below him.

Not forgetting, at least one comment I've seen in the public domain from people who used to work at the club. Apparently he was good at making some people below him feel like sh*t and offered minimal support and direction. But what do former employees know, eh?

There's so much out there showing how poor a job Tarry and, no doubt, others have done in charge of Salford. But for some reason people are happy to stay blind to things.

It's the same as any business, you can see the results of having a good/bad leader from the things that happen on the outside you don't have to know about every single little working of the business to know whether its well run or not.

Plenty huh? Well I've not, so like many here, I'm not really fit to judge.

An ex-employee criticising his/her ex-boss? That's a basis for [iyour[/i opinion?

Until fairly recently (pre-Barton) many were lauding us as an examplary club that performed admirably within its means. A few seasons pass and now we've been shambolically mismanaged over a 30 year period.
I've clarified my position many times before - I see a poorly supported rugby club with very little money and a small team of hard working peeps trying everything within their meager means to keep it alive. This redundancy hasn't changed that (yet). If that's nieve blindness, so be it.


That depends entirely how you measure success.
My local corner shop, for example, is pretty good. It has a world beers shelf and even sells that monthly RL magazine. However, compared to Tesco it's pathetic. Parking is iffy, it has no home-branded products, web store or national distibution chain and I don't believe they've ever advertised on prime time TV.
I personally think the club are sometimes guilty of trying too hard and are often found to be over-stretching their capability but that's a difficult criticism to add swear words to.

Bradford were also lauded as the flagship 'ran as a proper business' club in the face of the prevailing 'sugar-daddy' model. But things come out and opinions change.

Pragmatic is perhaps the most flattering epithet you can put to Tarry's reign; the responses to this thread represent the opposing arguments to his approach. Wherever you stand, after 30 years at the top, or in any role for that matter, you'll be long stale.

Not mine. I didn't have a clue about the running of our operation then and I don't now. (Just like many others sharing this thread.

)


A dynamic, young, proven replacement would be a good news story. That's not quite how this appears to be panning out though, is it?

Totally different. Your shop is local shop is good, it keeps itself ticking over quite nicely and keeps its regular customers happy so they keep coming back.

Salford don't. The club do not do the simple things right like: getting a phone line on time, getting internet installed on time, getting ticktes out on time, answering the phone when you ring, shutting the club shop with people waiting outside (then calling the fans who suggested it was shut liers), Installing a card machine on time so people who wanted to purchase goods can do so without carrying large amounts of cash wit them, the turf we've been promised has been with a 'Small family run firm' forever. The fans/customers expect a better level of service, we're always left in limbo about so many things and people don't want to come back (many who haven't as well), but do so, not because of the 'good work' by the people in charge, but because they have a love and passion for Salford RLFC.

All this fans bar thing, mascot, junior devils, on line shop, new website and everything is great, but this should have been done at the start of the season. I don't think it's any coincidence that this has all come into play within the last couple of months, whilst this consultants been in. DT was just happy to sit back and do very little. He was happy to let the club 'market itself'. In fact his exact words during a recent meeting with him was "well if the team are doing well, then we don't need to do that much as the marketing will be done for us". And he's had that attitude for years, he just thought if we built a stadium everyone would come flooding through the gates and he convinced everyone else on the board that would happen, well I'm sorry he's been proved wrong and now he's gone.

Best post on here in ages.

No ambitions to catch up with Tesco then?

Not good enough, but all are issues linked the to the Stadium move. A pretty exceptional event that doesn't quantify how we've been run for 30 years.
Could you offer some advice on how poorly we've handled commercial/sponsorship revenue opportunities? I've seen articles where we've boasted some big figures. Just good fortune?

I'm inclined to agree with him - a winning team should draw better crowds than posters and radio freebies. The Facebook feed from the club confirmed all the money goes into the team ahead of marketing for just that reason. Alas, even with our marketing coin in the squad budget, it's not enough.
I wasn't privy to those devious board meetings. Was he offered a massive marketing budget but couldn't be @rsed with the hassle of spending it?

At the end of the day, we tried to continue running the same operation that we ran at The Willows despite the opportunities that a new stadium presents both on and off the pitch, and within months it has been found by a strategic review that changes need to be made. Think that says it all really.

The commemorative shirt season ticket offer that was pulled after season tickets were sold, promised later in a season and never arrived. Ending the Junior Devils. Repeatedly late season tickets, and replica jerseys continually missing the Christmas market. Club website being out of date regularly for years. Being the only club on the Magic Weekend promo material wearing last year's shirt. Not selling online for years after amateur clubs have been doing it. Mysteriously only getting shirt sponsors who are linked to the chairman's companies or who are tied up with the club in land deals. Being the only English club not represented at a season launch event. Repeatedly sending duplicate letters to some season ticket holders and nothing to others. Failing to market 2012 season to the 10000 people who bought tickets for the last game of the 2011 season.



I've heard that we've always been at war with Eastasia.

So we just live in hope then and pay someone X amount of pounds? You are Mark Tarry and I claim my £5.

Of course they might want to reach Tesco's level, but realistically its not going happen. So they have the right idea in concentrating on what they're good at and what they need to do in order to keep their customers happy and make a nice living. In rugby terms we're never going to be as big as Wigan, but that doesn't excuse us from p1ss poor customer service (or does that cost money?). We need to keep our fans happy so they keep coming back, whilst trying to spread the word to attract new fans/customers. I really don't get your argument about your local shop and Tesco as it has no relevance to Salford and the way we've been run?



Finally you've agreed that something isn't good enough, I must say I'm shocked! The Stadium move was in planning for 10 years it didn't just pop up out of the ground over night, if that was the case I can understand why we didn't have these necessities in place. But as everyone knew what was coming things should have been in place. These faults didn't happen at Warrington/hull/Wigan etc when they moved so why should it happen here? The board and people at the top should have been liaising with the builders, council and Peel to make sure simple things like a telephone were in place, not just for the first game of the season, but a week or two before our friendly against Leigh.



Trish Goldsmith did a lot of good work with sponsorship she got sponsorship for the the Golden Angel scheme which was a great idea. A lot of other sponsors throughout the years have been from John's companies and John's business connections as well as friends such as Godliman and Watson. The recent sponsorship from the Trafford Centre and now Media City have a big part to do with the Salford City Council, Salford City Reds and Peel Holdings working together for the new stadium and also Peel and the Council working together to build Media city. I seriously doubt that DT clinched any of these deals.



Yeah, of course a winning team will bring people through the gates, but for him to sit there and say that he's relying on the team to do well is ludicrous as was his thinking that everyone would come flooding to watch Salford as soon as the stadium was built. Marketing does not have to cost that much money, your biggest marketing tools are already in place, the fans! If you keep them happy (which many haven't been for years), then they will bring friends, family etc along and word of mouth gets around. This thing about we're crap because we have a low budget is just an excuse. Yes money helps of course it does, but there are plenty of things that can be done on the cheap without costing the world.

I think the fact that we're even having this conversation and the fact I know of more people around the club that have my way of thinking speak volumes for the years under DT's leadership. The club has a lot of work to do to improve the trust and relationship between fans and that relationship didn't just fade overnight, but after years and years of mismanagement.