LoyalFan

A superb post i applaud you . I remember the ceefax Garry Jack headline like it was yesterday.

Loyal Fan







Now that is excellent constructive criticism of the club and nobody should object to that.

Copies of that should be blown up and placed in the boardroom ([iif we have one[/i) and the other in the dressing room and maybe it will be a rallying point for directors coaching staff players and fans to sort this mess we find ourselves in allow us to move forward as one.

Loyal Fan you have (I'm sorry to say) nailed it, spot on!

Print that off and post it to:

Whoever it may concern/ can be bothered,
c/o Salford City Reds,
1 Stadium Way
Eccles
M30 7EY

Danny, take a bow son! Simply class, simply scintilating, simply explained, simply emotional, simply you've said it all!

I've lived through every part of that post.

Now each time those club apologists come back with their utter trash, there should be a link straight back to your post for a reality check!

Oh and Danny, glad to see you took my advice re your avatar

Your thoughts on Loyal Fans post should be interesting

I haven't posted on here for ages because I read, with utter dismay, the crap spouted by five minute super fans and then ... this wonderful post from LoyalFan. I tip my hat to you - this is the crux of being a long time Salford supporter. brilliant post mate, heartfelt and completely true.

I agree with you in most aspects Danny but your not telling me that Moon isn't something very special and that Big Ray and Red weren't two of the best props you've seen in your time watching Salford (your give or take the same age as me). The club is punching above it's weight in one respect if not others in that it is still punching, by all rights with everything that the club has endured in it's recent history we are extremely fortunate to be in a position where we are in SL, where we have a player of the ability of Moon playing and where we have a stadium at our disposal that is everything that the Willows wasn't and I'm pretty sure will feel like home in years to come.

Sure like everyone I'd like a Salford through and through sugar Daddy to come along and I think like many others if I won the Euro Millions I'd be that person but let's face facts were not likely to suddenly find Bill Gates has become a Salford fan and is funneling his wealth into SCR. So we should be at least greatful for small mercies.

Darren I think you missed the point!?

Heart-breaking stuff loyal fan. Or can I call you fan?

Sorry to point this out, but if you are so loyal you wouldn’t be going out of your way to find fault with everything the club do.

On a serious note (this is to loyal fan), maybe this is just a blip for your loyalty.
Hopefully you will find that fire that made you do notable things for the club soon.

Something else (this is for all) in the last few posts I noted, was a notion that you could not be a real fan unless you had 40 years of week in week out support.

People have valid views and ideas, and should not be disregarded because they lack the 40 years of service. What next real fans can only be a certain sex, religion or colour!

Queue barrage of abuse.

Ps. loyal fan concentrate on the serious bit not the taking the p1ss bit!

No I didn't, I was simply stating that pointing out that there have been some incredibly talented and worthwhile players at Salford throughout the SL era.

Yep you missed the point but we'll leave it there.

I think I have a solution (at least on the playing front).

We need a hard-working, no-nonsense prop froward (someone like Paul Highton). Behind him we could give a maverick scrum-half a free role (someone like Sean Long). Get us another decent centre to replace Gleeson, someone who knows where the try line is (someone like Alan Hunte). To shore things up at the back we're gonna need a no-frills, solid full back (someone like Phile Veivers)...

Don't tell me what I did and didn't do, you have your views and opinions and I have mine - thankfully they will never meet.

Loyal Fan summed it all up, great post. The club I supported and followed all over since I was young is falling apart we get lows being Salford fans we know that but this is the lowest I've felt. Feel sick to the stomach and going past the stadium tonight didn't help seeing those Sale fans walking to a ground that we sweat blood and tears for that we were promised for well over a decade and they just waltz right in and take over. Absolutely heart breaking god knows where we will end up at this rate.

I've not posted for a while but felt the need to support Loyal Fan's post.

I have been watching since I was a kid (I'm not a kid any more - my ridiculous user name is from the days of the sportinglife boards!) and many of my family have been Salford supporters before me. But like Loyal Fan the magic went out of watching Salford a few years ago although I did still go to every game (and enjoy it) through the Harvey years. Its the McRae years and old stalwarts Littler and Highton leaving that did for me. I have not been to a game for over a year and dont plan to - its a sad state of affairs.

Its not just the club though - there are no characters playing anymore. The game is full of mercinaries out for the money and obviously looking at footballers as role models. What happened to the Tex Evans, Steve Gibsons, Paul Forbers, Neil Baynes etc.. who used to entertain us even when the rugby was atrocious? If I remember rightly Neil shed a tear when he was told he would be released - the players these days cant sign for someone else and get photo'd in their shirt quick enough.

I said last year when Ratchford left that there was a whif of him deserting a sinking ship - sadly its looking that way.

Things may change but as it stands I cant really consider myself a supporter any more.

First and foremost... you do have my complete respect as a Salford supporter... but I'm sorry to say... you did seem to miss my point... However... I absolutely value your opinion, but can't agree 100% with it.

The Mcrae years have done untold damage to Salford. The amount of people who lost interest during this period is massively understated. Another masterstroke by certain people at the club being persuaded to give him a 4 and a half year deal and then being unwilling/unable to afford to pay him off when it all turned sour.

Your reply encapsulates what I’ve been trying to say. You don’t actually [iknow[/i what the players you listed are on, but you [iassume[/i the player you spoke to does (why would he? Do you discuss your Ts & Cs with your workmates?), and go on to assume that those players won’t get offers anywhere else (who would have thought Ian Sibbit and Simon Finnegan would have ended up at other Super League clubs?), that Salford would offer them the same terms they are currently on (otherwise the terms offered by other clubs – if any – become better in comparison), terms you assume to be good. I’m just not seeing any hard evidence here.

What we have, then, is a forum with a small but vociferous group of people who seem to have decided that things are bad and then go looking for the evidence to support it. It’s significant that when I mentioned that not all players are leaving and that, in fact, some of the most promising youngsters have signed extended deals, your immediate response to that apparent silver lining was to go looking for the cloud. Yes, Salford are a stepping stone club. By my reckoning, there are ten such clubs in Super League. Nevertheless, to sign a five year contract at a club that is apparently delaminating before our eyes suggests, to me, that things aren’t as black as some paint it on here.

But it seems, everything the club does it does badly, and we have a lengthy post by someone who likes to use ellipses a lot (can’t remember his/her name, sorry) detailing that view. Fair enough, the club has made mistakes, but it’s easy to run a club when you don’t actually have to do it, and it’s even easier when you have the benefit of hindsight, something the people making the decisions don’t have. So, yes, appointing Shaun McRae was a big mistake, but I recall complaints on this very forum about Salford’s habit of appointing inexperienced coaches (Harvey, McCormack, Harrison, et al) and the club responded by appointing what the fans had asked for: an experienced coach. And yes, there were some people expressing doubts about how long he’d been out of coaching (including me), but I don’t recall anyone predicting what an utter disaster it would become. The lengthy post refers to the appointment of Matt Parrish as another mistake, but, again, that seems to me to be using the benefit of hindsight. I don’t recall any complaints at the time of his appointment. In fact, I just recall a huge amount of excitement about the club appointing a coach who had been involved in State of Origin. No-one, to the best of my knowledge, predicted that he’d pi[is[/is off in less than a year, leaving the club in no better state than it was when he came. Worse, in fact, because he became the catalyst for the upsurge in negativity on here.

And bigger clubs than Salford balls up. On the coaching front, think of Ian Millward at Wigan and Royce Simmons at Saints. On the general admin front, Salford have come nowhere near the gigantic clusterfu[ic[/ik that is Bradford. I think the difference is that people on here are now looking for the balls ups, which is a shame.

But that’s not to say everything is rosy, and we’re perhaps not as far apart as it may appear. I think where we disagree is on where the problems lie. For me, they boil down to a lack of finance, and this has two root causes. Firstly, John Wilkinson isn’t the bottomless pit of money that some club’s benefactors seem to be and secondly (brace yourself: this might be controversial) the people of Salford just aren’t interested in the sport. You know I like evidence, and my evidence is in the form of a question (actually, a few questions). If the city has a huge latent support for SCR and the sport in general, where are they all? Do we have a thriving amateur scene? Are the city’s other professional RL club packing them in at the LSV? How many Salfordians are currently playing in Super League? I’m going to take a punt on the basis of no evidence whatsoever but because it suits me to believe it (I know, just call me Dantes (sic) Inferno) that there are more Leythers [icurrently[/i playing in Super League than there have [iever[/i been Salfordians throughout the entire fifteenish years Super League has existed. That’s why I believe we are fortunate to even have a Super League club. And, for me, that suggests things aren’t as black as some would have it.

Anyhoo, I’ll stop boring you now and leave it at that. I doubt you’re going to persuade me that everything is black, just as I’m not going to persuade you that not everything is, and I doubt anyone is going to persuade the excitables on here that pointing out that not everything the club does is wrong is [inot[/i the same as believing everything it does is right, and that you’re just an apologist for them . Far from it.

I think you have also missed the point of my post. However, I can't help but like the passion you show for the club. I think we could spend all day discussing our thoughts and feelings about all things Salford (all as a healthy debate of course).

(Look no ellipses)

Quality post Loyalfan.

When you involve yourself in the Club that you love. Grow up with it. Become so familiar with every aspect that it feels like an extension of your home and your life. It's hard to take the lows at the moment. We seem to be slowly starving to death as a Club and it's heartbreaking to witness it and be unable to do anything about it. Rugby League as a whole seems to have lost something over the last decade or so with it's relentless push to an unachievable dream. It feels more hollow. Less involved, at least to me.

Salford feels like a stripped down version of the old Club. Like we've peeled off layers of our hundred year history. Cast it off in an effort to keep up with the steamroller that is modern Sport. We seem to be barely keeping up and have lost so much of what we made over the years. It wasn't perfect, but it was ours. On paper we have not changed, but the soul of our Club has become hollow.

Sad days.

But you are still suggesting that people are staying away from the club because of negative posts on here. Perhaps you live in a happy little bubble, but most of the people I know who've stopped going have done so because of the way in which the club and new stadium have been run.

I do agree with the last paragraph, definitely. But, where do those negative perceptions of the initial person "slagging off" the club come from? People have been worn down over the years, but still people like yourself cannot see that things have been done poorly by Salford for quite a while. People are not staying away because of negative posts/comments or whatever else from Salford supporters, particularly on a forum which is only read by a minority.

If we had someone who cared running the club this thread would scare the crap out of them.

If.

The only thing that will save the soul of our club now is a fan taking over in a leadership or ownership role. It may well continue as a business but it'll never be something the people of Salford are proud of and can fall in love with again otherwise.

I can’t work out if you are pulling my leg or you are serious!

I point out that at no point have I said "posts on this forum stop people attending games".
Following it with clarification of what I said so there could be no misunderstanding (something which you agreed with).
And you still have a go!



You need to let it go.

Also, at no point have I said that the club is run well.
Do I still live in a bubble?

Great Post,Loyalfan.The views shared by a lot of us,you should send the chairman and the board a copy.