Without the union hang ups and hatred i genuinely don't see a problem.

The stadium doesn't belong to Salford and it WON'T belong to Sale, like all stadiums it's a concreate block with grass in the middle that facilitates the ease of watching a game with multiple bodies. The season is at a different time of year and your chairman and Sale's chairman will have a minimal role in the running of the stadium.

Stop moaning for the sake of it and just enjoy the facilities you get to watch your team in.

My point and worry is if Salford and Sale come under the same ownership in the future, that we might not have much of a team worth watching, irrelevant of who owns the stadium.

I don't understand why they would do though, i don't mean to sound derogatory but Sale are a bigger entity than Salford right now, they have a higher crowd average and why would Kennedy want to either buy or have a stake in SCR?
If i was the owner of Sale because i liked union why would i invest in a league side unless i thought i could make money out of it?

Even x amount of years down the line i can't see any sort of crossover between Sale and Salford, if and that's a massive IF either of Salford or Sale wanted to own the stadium i'm pretty sure a covenant would be drawn in to the contract to protect both parties interests.

If the stadium was actually Salfords then i'd understand your fears but seeing as it belongs to the council i see no problems.

VULTURES

With money to spend , that's the important bit

There was a very good article in MEN recently pointing out that RU can and will attract RL stars with the promises of far better salaries, more media presence, and more international status.

That's the major concern with a "joint" ownership: we (i.e. the club) become a feeder/of lower status : the work of such as Blackburn and Hunte would be part of a supply chain to Sale's teams. This would be the opposite of what happened at Wigan (anyone remember Orrell?) but similar in effect: the RL presence would always be at the behest of the RU club.
This may be the future now England RU have the financial/media clout to tempt RL players from even such as Wigan and Leeds. However why us?
I know I am seen as sometimes gloomy but I am very concerned if Kennedy could take over. It has been a strong possibility for some time.

I cannot see it assisting a continued SL status either.

Wether it would be joint ownership or not isn't the issue , the Barton Stadium will need over 30 matches a year to operate without losing money , either way you will end up with a partner tenant , but they will need you , just as much as you need them

The only way it wont work is if you cannot grow your fan base there , if that happens , then you have problems

That will entirely depend on what kind of revenues they can get on the other 300+ days a year they will be renting it out as a very conveniently located conferencing/function venue. Looking at the amount of bookings the Event City team seem to have generated from a standing start in an ex Argos warehouse the people behind this seem to know what they are doing.

:340v1gij

Looking at the Catering deal , have the SMC not given this up to that company for the 26 grand a week ? , that is how I read it ?

If anyone thinks Kennedy would be good for Salford then they really haven't paid attention to the way Stockport have been screwed over.

Again, you would have thought he'd have no interest in taking Stockport on unless he could make a success out of them... Instead he's bled them dry and left them for dead.

I just pray he's not allowed anywhere near control of Salford, nor the stadium and Peel/the council keep him at arm's length if Sale do move in.

where has this been announced? am i missing it in the thread somewhere?

What been announced ? , the stadium catering deal ? , try the stadium thread , two pages back

What has this guy at Sale actually done to Stockport?

Its an interesting prospect (to me as an insider). Logically it would make sense to double the amount of matches that are held at the stadium. It also doubles the amount of coverage the stadium gets, which must be a good thing for Salford. The stadium is council owned so there shouldn't be any worry of someone stepping in and taking the stadium from you.

My theory is that with this stadium being built, with MediaCity being opened and with the rumours of Magic weekend moving to Manchester there will be a big push to bring a lot of media attention to Salford and Manchester to capitalise on BBC Sport's move to MediaCity. My guess, considering that next season's Magic weekend hasn't been confirmed yet, is that it could potentially be held in Manchester and be the Quarter final fixtures of the Challenge Cup (if the RFL are trying to soften up the BBC why and where better to do it than on their doorstep in a flashy stadium when they have coverage rights). I would also guess that the championship finals and CC semis would go to your stadium for similar reasons.

If this is the case then Salford doesn't really need to worry about Sale. By not having Sale there, Salford can essentially start to drown out the noises of Sale. On the other hand having Sale there would potentially mean more financial stability and more visibility for the stadium. Sale could, however, also see the potential that having MediaCity on their doorstep can have and this could be part of the reason to move.

On the one hand it could just make good business sense. On the other, it could explode into a turf war between the two clubs to attract more supporters and MediaCity's attention.

In a nutshell and from limited knowledge. He bought Stockport County, including Edgeley Park, and moved Sale in. Then Stockport's fortune's plummeted (I don't know the reasons), the football club (minus the ground) was then sold to the Supporters Trust to try to run on a shoestring, and the football club became tenants at Edgeley Park. They've since had major financial issues and are now near the bottom of the conference.

My main concern about them moving on to "our patch" would be the possibility of them sending development officers (well funded by the RFU) out into Salford schools (and wider) and the like and using ample resources to grow the game of union outside it's traditional patch to the detriment of RL development.

Your ' patch ' includes Sale , but either way , they need you as much as you need them , simple as

let's change "they need you as much as you need them" to "they need you as much as you have built up links to amateur clubs and schools"

For what ? , fans or future players ?

Couldn't Sale do most of the things you accuse them of even if they are not playing out of salfords new ground?

That was going to be my answer to his reply

Let's begin with the fact I have no axe to bear against Sale: in fact, tonight, if I hung back after work for a drink I would be with Sale fans as I work within spitting distance of Stockport's ground.Secondly I also have no qualm with any sport going into any school: I was a teacher for 27 years.

If you check my posts I refer to the very likely situation if Salford RLFC became either a junior partner of or subservient to Sale RUFC. Both become trading rivals in an area committed to football and both work out of the same base.

I refer you to my posts to what I expect will happen.

Do you think though that it could end up being a good thing for Salford to have a rival club playing out of their own stadium? Not to be disrespectful in anyway, but they don't put themselves about much in the media round here. If Sale are directly competing with them and on their turf then it could be the swift kick up the backside that Salford needed to assert themselves as the third biggest sporting club of the Salford-Manchester area.

How would Salford be able to assert itself if its run by a business team whose main priority is Sale? it makes no financial or business sense to keep 2 sets of sales and marketing and media teams and i would expect it would be the Sale side that would be kept on. If Kennedy was to buy Salford, it might not give him any physical assets, but it would give him top priority in the stadium. The ability to priortize fixtures to suit Sale's corporate hospitality and therefore open them up to increased revenue in itself must be worth the investment. Remember we chose friday as our business plan included generating a sizable chunk of our income through hospitality. it may only affect half our season but that could still be a significant amount to our club

You'd be sharing a stadium, that's it. Your marketing and PR team would be a completely different entity to Sale's and the stadium's (assuming the stadium will even have one). Your team would promote Salford, their's would promote Sale. The two would only merge if one club bought the other out, otherwise they would remain seperate. Salford would be still be run by Salford, there wouldn't be a conflict of priorities within their organisation. This is what I'm suggesting. Salford have a reival sporting club, not only in the same area, but the same roof, which forces them to start marketing much harder than they have done in the past.

Mr wilkinson and friends have put us in that position,ask him,or his he more interesed in some hotel project?

you're missing my point, which is that if Kennedy was to buy our club, which is something i fear will happen, then we'd be sharing more than the stadium and therefore we may not necessarily be given the same level of priority