Couldn't have put it better myself.

I personally think it's something worth trying for a number of reasons: -
1. Cup games over the lat few years are badly attended at Salford as well as other teams.
2. It's a great way of putting our sport and particularly Salford in the spotlight for fans who probably wouldn't come across to Barton on spec.
3. It shows the SMC that there are other options.
4. We need to attract new and lapsed fans down to watch.

Imagine we go across to say the Ethiad Training Stadium which I think holds about 8,000. Even if it was only 50-60% full with about 500 -1000 new fans and it was a decent game. I think the atmosphere would be pretty good and maybe some of the new fans would come across to watch the odd game in Summer.

We have to try new things to move forward.
Remember when Amazon was first muted most people gave it no chance. Now look at it. Even the Internet was decried and without it we wouldn't be able to air our views.

If it was on the road Myself and our group of fans would certainly be there.

The more you think about the more you see it is the Doc flexing his muscles and saying to the SMC, pull your finger out as there are other options.

The SMC is already living pretty much hand to mouth and losing a large slice of it's income from Salford would be a very sobering thought for you. I can see this being a precursor to the Doc looking to buy if not all of the stadium a significant share of it.

This is pretty much what I was thinking when I first saw that. We know that CC games are a shared gate, we know that CC games have (shamefully) been poorly attended, we know that the Doc isn't best pleased with what the stadium charges. A poorly attended cup game at AJB could make a loss. A threat to play elsewhere may help get a better deal.

Personally, I'm massively against a permanent move out of Salford, or a branding towards Manchester (and I'm a Mancunian), but I can see some possible benefit in having [uA[/u game in a different part of the area. Having a few thousand people on cheapo tickets with very little preconceptions about what they are going to see, watching us play an open style of rugby and mullering a lower division team, might actually get more people to try it again than our historic method of attracting a crowd for a game against well known opposition, then getting mullered ourselves. Obviously, the best thing we could do would be to get decent crowds in for home gaimes against bigger name opposition [iand[/i beat them. Wakefield seem to have managed it.




I'm sorry, but that is simply wrong. I was doing a lot of work in Central/East Mcr in May/June this year and there were at least a dozen billboards along main roads, plus the electronic displays seen by thousands of s-l-o-w moving cars on the Mancunian way. In addition, there were posters at many metrolink stations. It would be interesting to know how many Mcr based neutrals went.

Well done to MK the club have got to try a generate some interest. What do you want the guy to do, he as done everything he said he would do unfortunately the Salford public are not interested in the only professional sports club in Salford.

It all comes down to cost doesnt it? Lets say we draw Gateshead at home. Would we get 2,000 @ home? Just think of the costs of hire of ground, countless Stewards and Jobsworths so Marwan is looking to foot a huge loss. Split gate as well as Iain has noted.

Does the Cup attract any more anyway? Have to concur with many on here and agree to a move especially in the early rounds.

As an aside - Sale`s gates are very poor arent they? Under 5,000 again last week and that for a Premiership Fixture. I wouldnt be surprised that the Landlords are beginning to worry that there may be NO tenants shortly. Sale might as well play at Heywood Road or even back to Edgeley Park. We need MK to buy out the Council asap.

I was looking at MK's Twitter this morning with a brew and came across this -

'Despite that our ST sales are 15% down on last year and are the lowest in SL., I will keep the faith and try everything to increase fan base'

Now, regardless of a few factors such as slow pre-Xmas and the new SL format adding to the slow take-up, these numbers are pretty worrying. In time I think they'll pick-up and settle somewhere where they did last season. The worrying bit for me is the message it's sending to MK and Vickers about the Salford public. We can make all the excuses under the sun about the whys but the fact is that if the Salford public don't get off their backsides we're in danger of losing it. Either totally by abandonment or the Club whisked away and changed. Figures like these show that taking a game across Manchester is even more viable in an effort to get more interest generated.

Spot on, the new stadium are shafting us.
And something needs to be done.

Does anyone actually know when the lease is up? You'd love to be a fly on the wall of the negotiations when it is up for renewal.

Ever since the Doc took over the club I have failed to see why the council/Peel don't want to sell up, neither can be making any type of money from the project and you'd think from the councils point of view the Doc would then invest heavily in the surrounding area to increase the profitability.

Maybe this is part of the Docs end game in looking at taking a game or two on the road.

The idea of trying a game on the road is OK. The difficulty is deciding which game. I don't agree that mullering a lower division team would bring the punters in. These games tend to be very low intensity, with few visiting fans, home fans standing around with their hands in their pockets (or sitting back in their seats) and with very little atmosphere. They end up being like glorified training sessions, and I'm not sure that's a particularly attractive proposition. However, if you take a game against bigger opposition on the road, you're giving up home advantage when a good cup run could be one way of bringing more fans in.

I think the ideal game would be a WCC type game, but you've got to get into the WCC first, of course.

Ideal would be getting Bradford/Leigh at 'home', sure to bring a large number of fans, some good quality players and going to be a tough uncompromising game.

A fan who is watching the game for the first time wants to see as much physicality as a run away score line, FuiFui V Tasi/Hock/HH would offer that.

I once read an article about Peel. To use the business-type phrase, they 'take the long view' in that they don't necessarily expect the projects they get involved in to start making money straight away. They're prepared to wait years, even decades. The fact they appear unwilling to sell their share in the stadium suggests they still smell money in it.

I think the city's problem is that they're in damage limitation over it. It's unlikely they'd recover their outlay if they sold their share now, and to do so would be to hand another opportunity to Coun. Garrido to have a fecking good moan about something. I think her desire to change the past prevents the city ever moving forward with the stadium.

Are people overstating our supposed level of bargaining power over the stadium? We've paid no rent since moving in, and the first time we are expected to pay up the club are openly looking at other options.

Regarding the apathy of the Salford public, let's have a couple of years with top half finishes and see what happens before declaring it as a total write off.

Would have been interesting to see how ST sales had gone with a full off season spent marketing the arrival of Locke.

I had a chat with someone who works in the local Monton/Worsley community last week and her take on the Garrido woman was even more withering than my own, she sees Worsley Village as her own little estate and has numerous times blocked attempts by investors/locals to improve things. The lady I was chatting with was astounded that she hadn't kicked up more of a fuss about the extension at Georges.

I think the initial outlay of the council was £13,000,000 so if the Doc bought a half share at that the council would recoup it's money surely? Then you'd think that Peel would let someone with the Docs business acumen take more of a role in running the place to maximise the profits which ultimately the club would benefit from. You'd think that if he did ever get a share that the building of the academy facilities would be much more likely to happen.

Whenever I've heard her being interviewed, I get the impression she's probably single-handedly responsible for keeping the Tories as far away from having any form of control in Salford as it's possible to be. It's almost as if she's a Labour double-agent, except Labour aren't as sophisticated as that.

On the stadium, remember that it's currently crapping money out of every orifice like the plague is in town, and has had to be bailed out a couple of times. This means that the city's outlay is now more than that initial £13 million. It also means anyone would be daft to take it on, particularly at a price that would cover the city's costs. (By the way, does it actually [ifeel[/i like a £26 million stadium?) Peel's long game may be related as much to the influence it might bring them over other construction projects they want in Salford as to what the stadium itself could eventually earn. Marwan's smart, and I doubt he'd be willing to pay as much for it as the city would need in order to keep Coun. Garrido happy. Seems like a bit of an impasse at the moment.

Wasn't the £13,000,000 including the building of the infrastructure and units surrounding the stadium?

A council doesn't always make money on every project though, some are investments in the future of certain areas, if they sold up getting serious new coffers into the bank and then the area was invested in my the Doc/Peel then surely they have done the job we all expect a council to do for the local community?

I'm basing my thought on what happened with Manchester Storm*. Early on the crowds flocked to see them hammer teams - the crowds had no preconceptions and didn't really know anything about the quality (or lack of) of teams like Bracknell, Ayr, Telford & Blackburn, they just wanted to be entertained by seeing their team win, and win well. How that would translate to an atmosphere for an RL game with a decent sized crowd of newbies is unknown. The atmospere for such a game at Barton would be dire, and that's partly due to us existing fans knowing that it's no big deal to be able to steamroller lower opposition, but the newbies don't have that same world-weariness about them. You get it at Barton sometimes when the kids in the East Stand who are in for some schools/juniors activity are clearly getting more excited about what's going on on the pitch than many in the South Stand.


* And yes, let Manchester Storm also serve as a warning to those thinking that Manchester is the sporting promised land.




Oddly I can't find that answer online despite being sure I remember articles with Wilkinson and John Merry showing the "anchor tenant" agreement being signed. What I do remember is that when they announced that Sale were coming on board, Sale had a longer lease - Sale's is 25 years, so I'm guessing ours may be 15 (I seem to remember something about 5-year break/review clause).

Anybody who attended the St Thomas church meeting Dec 2012, may recall Wilkinson confiding Salford had been courted by Richard Leese in the late 1990's as a tenant for Maine rd.
The implication was the threat to leave the city led to a closer involvement with the club and ultimately to the rented stadium we are wallowing in today and the demolition of our ancestral home.
one wonders how our fortunes would have fared had Wilkinson actually carried out the threat, secondly if the Dr threatened a similar action I doubt whether the council would or could stand in his way considering the ' monetary machinations ' of their past financial backing.
Facing facts, to 95% of the current population has zero interest in the club or the sport , when the club is mentioned along civic lines it's as a money draining parasite, responsible for a white elephant stadium.
It's not a scenario I would support , if financially it was felt playing outside the city would prove advantageous, ( or lose less money ) , but it has precedent , Broughton Rangers - to Belle Vue Rangers.

As other people have mentioned , it ramps up the pressure for the team to be successful and pull in bigger attendances next season , use it or lose it ?

Maybe you should turn off your computer and go outside, then. I know a few people from in and around Droylsden. They're all aware of both the sport and our club.



I'm not suggesting otherwise. That's half my argument. The attraction has to be there, more than an invitation, in my experience. The attraction isn't there if the team's no good.



The whole "Red Devilution" thing in the build up to that was a marketing campaign, come and see the new era and all that. I know people who came to that game on the back of it who haven't been back since. As it is, I don't blame the club for trying something new and, believe it or not, I'm not dead set against it, although I'm not 100% keen on the idea. I just don't think it's the promised land people think it is.



I'm basing it on Mancunians I know from watching other sports, who always look out for Salford's results, always ask me about everything and show a keen interest in the club. Mention that they should come to a game and have a look and suddenly the excuses start, or it's a flat out case of "naah, can't be d, maybe if they start doing well." I'm not denying there's people out there who don't know about the club or the stadium (I've been told FC United's new ground next to the motorway looks impressive a couple of times...) but from experience I wouldn't say it's the majority. The majority either won't come unless the team does well, or is in a big, important game, or would rather watch Wigan/Saints/Warrington. That's the big hurdle we need to get over.



As I've already said, I'm not dead set against it and I can see why it's being done. And you know what? It could be a success and attract a load of new supporters who flock to the City of Salford Stadium on a regular basis. But it could just as easily attract people who go along for the novelty value with no interest in coming to another game or even just fall flat. That's the risk you take, though, I guess.

GT you make far more sense when posting under this alias.

Possibly, but I'm still not convinced. Watching a team run 50+ points past the opposition might appeal to kids - giving the team a kind of invincible super hero vibe - but I'm not sure it would work for the more discerning punter. I suspect the attraction of something new and American would have been a factor in drawing people to watch the Storm, whereas RL doesn't have that, and I'm not sure serving up a 'lambs to the slaughter' event would be as attractive.

As far as I'm aware, the stadium cost £26 million, so the city's share was the £13 million.

I think the problem is that for the city to sell up, it would have to recover that outlay or the letters page in the Advertiser would go ballistic, but, given that the stadium makes a loss, why would anyone pay that much for it? And it isn't really benefitting the local community. Salford Red Devils is a private business. Would you be happy to see the city build a £13 million superstore and then sell it to Tesco for less than that? It's the same situation. In the long run, the presence of that stadium or that superstore may bring some limited regeneration to the area, but at the cost of giving a huge amount of council tax payers money to a private business, which doesn't look good.

Salford Council might be making a loss from the actual stadium, but they'll more than recoup this through sales and rental income from the surrounding land and future retail/leisure facilities.

A point to be wary of if the plan is to start to draw support from East Manchester. For 10 years I worked on/with projects related to the regeneration of the area, many based around job creation, training and increasing people's skills and employability. Broadly speaking it was an ongoing struggle to get people to go out of the area (for job interviews, training courses etc) because for a few generations there was lots of industry and most people in the area worked close to where they live. Projects would find people in Beswick saying that they couldn't/wouldn't travel to Higher Openshaw, let alone places like Trafford Park and Wythenshawe where there were big industrial estate with jobs.

It's over 5 years since I was working with these projects, and Metrolink has probably opened it up a bit to the wider area, but I think that if Salford want to attract new support from Manchester, then East Manchester might not give the richest pickings (but there's not really any other stadiums to play at).

So that makes it ok then?