Do you have a name badge on with Skudlooking on it?

Makes it a tad tricky, can you imagine excuse me Ma'am are you Skudlooking? slap

lol thought you may have looked at my twitter pic,
should i turn up sunday with a rose an a copy of the times??? lol

Twitter! - vile and the beginning of the end of Western Civilisation - Antisocial media.

A Triffid and a copy of the Beano might be more appropriate.

I rarely post here, so a lot of you might not know me, and I've not made a song and dance about being selected to sit on the fans advisory panel.

However, in the spirit of transparency, here goes......

My name is Rob and I work in education in Leeds. Prior to this I was a sports journalist and still have work published sporadically as a freelance writer. I've also been involved with establishing and running three community rugby league clubs. I applied for the advisory panel as I thought I might be able to provide some insight based on the three areas listed above.

I'm happy to act as a conduit for feedback for other fans and am happy to communicate via PM or email. Alternatively, feel free to collar me in the fans bar.

Cheers

Rob

the Posters who ran the fanzine frequent and created forum are regarded as elitist ' the Turkey lot ' .

the Fans who set up Forever Reds , an independent supporters friendly society, has always been on hand for fans advice but for some reason has always been looked on by some with suspicion.

Now we have Marwan's 12 Disciples , again suspicion looms ,

All without question have the best interests of the club at heart , and all do their bit in various ways to promote the club but nobody trusts 'em.

funny lot us Salford fans ...

Hence the reason I'd planned to keep quiet about my involvement rather than treating it as a 'badge of honour.' However, given some of the comments regarding lack of clarity on here and elsewhere I thought it best to identify myself.

There's a good chat about what the group did on the latest Devil in the Detail podcast. With one of the members who is a podcast regular and with Martin Vickers.

The guy from DitD said he'd happily raise issues if people email them and MV said they don't want to create a big bureaucracy but they're looking to refresh the members every year or so and at ways to increase fans access to them and more generally about taking fans views into account more. So I'd suggest patience, it's early days yet

And thanks for the offer wayward fan

Well at the moment it looks like a Secret Society Feedback to the rest of the fans non existent. The M Koukash Klan (theres a new one for Bingo).

I know for a fact that Shirley - quite wrongly imo - was not selected and neither I believe was KOTS. MK sent me a mail to apply which I then did. You know what - I sent Vickers 3 mails yet still not one reply. Apart from being damned rude its just plain ignorant isnt it?

The meeting was a chance for the fans board to meet each other there is no secret or hiding anything involved, as i said on the ditd podcast and posted on here if anyone wants to forward issues i am happy to look at them.

Regarding the choice of members WE as a group did not make the choice we simply emailed like everyone else.

Again if anyone wants to speak to me or know who i am drop me a dm, i will be outside the fans bar before the game sunday!

Shirley not being selected (I assume she applied) is a real shocker, if anyone knows any fan more Red Devils through and through than Shirley I'd be surprised. The fact that she took Theo into her family home when he first moved over here shows that perfectly.

I got a well worded perfectly nice email when I wasn't selected and I harbour no grudges at not being selected, I assume that my fellow fans want what I would do - the best for the team going forward.

I understand people wont want to criticise this so early on in its inception. But Ive heard a lot of private sing and criticism of this idea with people at games, so I may aswelll post my HONEST opinion. Firstly, the fact that Iain and Shirley arent on this really does give this idea very little credibility, clearly they've done more for our club than a lot of fans will ever do (and the fact that someone from Yorkshire is on the panel, instead of local people, really does turn this into a laughing stock!). Also, It appears to have been selected from a basis of 'whoever can shout the loudest on twitter'. From the pictures on facebook it seems that there werent even 12 members there. Again, this is disapointing - if you cant turn up or attend why apply? I understand this started at 5pm though, so am I right to assume that the ones that did turn up were all unemployed? Overall, it seems like the members are being used as a free PR exercise by the club. No doubt it will lead to them defending the ownership in times of debate but the reality is these members have no power and the club will be using them to deliver leaflets and save postage in a few weeks



Anyway, thats my opinion. I know not everyone will PUBLICLY agree with it. But from who Ive spoken to I know Im not the only one who thinks this.

Thanks for your HONEST post mario why dont we discuss in person my employment status etc,

Im sure I wouldnt be the only one who'd love to meet you in person. I presume you'll be at the game on Sunday? What do you look like and where do you want to meet up then?

No matter who is selected there will be comments and complaints.

Maybe there was a decision not to select anyone from the board of Forever Reds as Marwen knows where they are for input and the 12 are another avenue for the Chairman.

Lets face it Shirl has come in for a fair bit of unprovoked aggressive criticism for any number of things on here over the last couple of years.

I've had a quick look at the photos and it looks like a fairly diverse collection of supporters. Renewing them every 12 months will keep it fresh and give many more the chance to be involved

I will be outside the fans bar at 2ish sunday, not sure how to post pics on forum but if u search my forum name on twitter im the one in the red salford shirt

Just input but since the beginning of this season Swinton have had fans representation on what is known as the Board of Management.
The two individuals were selected from members of the supporters trust and for an initial period of 12 months.
Granted our support base doesn't match Salfords but I can't grasp why 12 are needed, especially if the have no real vote in running issues.
The concept is a good idea but it has to be transparent to all the support.

Which makes it even more worrying that your Supporters Trust has more members than Salford - and the way the Trust assisted your club was commendable,earlier this year.

I'm not going to get drawn into who did/didn't get invited. It's not my place to comment and I've got too much respect for those who I know in both categories.

I will comment on a couple of issues:

1) amongst those who were there on Wednesday, there was a broad range of supporters in every sense. This is a good thing IMO. I also welcome the suggestion that the panel will be refreshed on an annual basis. This is essential.

2) as for it being a "secret society," I chose not to 'broadcast' the fact I'd been invited because, frankly, that's not really my thing. My hope was simply to be able to volunteer my help to the club from behind the scenes.

Secondly, the reason the topics of discussion and their outcomes haven't been plastered over the Internet is because, at this very early stage, I'm still not clear on which items were for public consumption. With that in mind, it'd be incredibly 'unprofessional' not to act with discretion at this stage. Once things bed in I'm sure there'll be a procedure that guarantees more transparency and I've already offered to act as a link for any supporter who wishes to raise an issue - even if it's not something that I necessarily agree with.

That's fair enough

I think every member of the board has every right to (a) keep it to themselves or (b) advertise the fact that they are a member of the board. I'm sure most of the members will have a genuine interest in seeing Salford move forward as a club. I don't think either way prohibits them adding value to their inclusion on the board.
I do think however there should be a way for fans on this forum to post questions and ideas to be considered by the board. This should be kept for questions only and not general discussion. Discussions could be spawned to other threads. I like many other do not partake in the social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
Perhaps we could have a Sticky on the forum to allow this to happen (Mods?). This could be refreshed after every meeting with answers that have been cleared to be public knowledge. Obviously some points won't be for public consumption and should be kept private.

This seems to be a good starting point.

As I've previously made clear, I'm more than happy to make representations on behalf of other supporters; that's what I'm there for.

Email works best for me (Iain has my contact details) or you can simply seek me out on match day in the supporters bar.

I looked for wise people carrying posh newspapers with a flower in their lapel but didn't see anyone.

Can I suggest that the mods launch a sticky on here for suggestions and that if one of the mods is one of the chosen ones that they create a spurious account for people like myself to send a pm as I have no desire for the numpties who hate for hatings sake to pick holes in any suggestions someone might have.