Give me Cougar Park any day!

I see you’ve chosen to only use Sale’s Premiership games to arrive at your figure and comparing Salford’s 2013 attendances to them isn’t a true reflection, given our turbulent troubles off field last year. Our 2012 average was higher than Sale’s is this season, our 2014 average will be too.

On another matter even the most die hard Sale fans are questioning the attendance figures announced at games, with many believing the actual crowd to be much less. I don’t see what benefit the Sharks would get from announcing a higher number apart from the obvious avoidance of embarrassment

Cash turnstiles aren't that hard to administer, particularly if you've got the necessary coins/notes for change to hand. And it's more convenient than queuing up twice, once to buy a ticket and once to get through the turnstile. So entry to the ground is actually quicker. Scanning the tickets doesn't always work first time, too. I was stood a few times waiting for the G4S robot on the turnstiles having two or three goes on scanning my card.

I agree it is more convenient, but only marginally. I just dont agree cash turnstiles are required at our stadium or any other stadium in Super League. The number of complaints I've seen regarding this is minimal, as it isnt too hard to pre-purchase, pre-order, pre-print a ticket or buy on the day.

I know from our friendly vs Leigh last week that they werent operating a cash turnstile, so I pre ordered and collected from reception with no fuss.

Salford fans sniping at Salford fans. I've seen it all now.

With all due respect, attendance comparisons ought be as close to a like-for-like comparison as possible in order to provide a truer reflection. In this particular case, that would be a straight comparison between Sale's Aviva Premiership home attendances and Salford's Super League home attendances which shows that Sale's attendances are double the size of Salford's.

It's clear that home attendances at Sale's cup games are (in most cases) only half of what they get for their Aviva Premiership fixtures. I'm quite sure that if there were enough Salford Challenge Cup home attendances to include in their figures, their overall attendance average would also nosedive even further than they already are since it's common knowledge that Challenge Cup attendances across the board are significantly lower than regular season Super League attendances.

When I was posting the SL attendance stats last season which highlighted Salford's 2013 home attendances (in spite of all the cheap deals on tickets) hovering around 45% down on 2012, several Salford apologists questioned the 2012 attendance figures claiming they were far lower than the attendance figures officially reported.

Not always so simple, particularly if someone doesn't know they're going until last minute. People have been known to end up queuing for 20, 30 even 40 minutes since the stadium opened. That was getting there in plenty of time, too. The need for the staff to take every last detail off someone before giving them a ticket didn't help. A cash turnstile is much simpler, much more convenient and a lot easier to handle. But, we're stuck with what we've got, at least whilst G4S are involved, so there's no point going round in circles over this.



Arf.



Well, there were usually 2 or 3 attendance figures given in various quarters for each of our home games, with questions asked about which were actually the genuine ones. Certain comments from Koukash and the new regime of staff suggest the lower ones were nearer the mark. Something which all those who'd been stood in the ground laughing at our announced attendances could heartily agree with.

Nowt to do with being an apologist, more pointing out that the previous incumbents of our club did everything they could to make it look like the stadium was working fine for us.

This is exactly the sort of "supporter friendliness" aspect that Sale are talking about.

Yes, it probably isn't difficult for supporters to make prior arrangements but likewise, it would be even easier for the SCS to make it easier for supporters to buy the product. To say "you can't pay by cash here, but you can queue pay by cash over there before queuing back here, or you can do this, this, this, that or this" is nonsensical.

Likewise, whilst Salfordians are playing down the parking / access issue, it shouldn't be down to customers to work out every little trick and shortcut - it is down to the supplier to make their product as accessible as possible. You don't see the likes of ASDA coming out with statements like "sure, our car park is a nightmare, but there is an airflied 10mins walk away where you can park". Instead, they work to solve the problem.

It is all about making the product easy to buy. I fail to see why the people at SCS find this so difficult to grasp.

I like your thinking generally about customer service, but, if all of ASDA's customers turned up in one two hour shopping period then they might just have a problem.

At a sporting event, or dare I say it a pop concert (showing my age I know) does everyone expect to be able to park next to the venue, then miraculously be able to drive away without a minutes delay? A 10-15 minute walk is acceptable and generally if there is a known problem then as a customer I also expect to work around it within reason

Of course not. People are (usually) reasonable in their expectations but they still expect their lives to be easy.

Salford, more so than some other clubs, desperately needs to attract new fans, new audiences and new customers (Koukash has been very public about that), so it is in their interests to make their venue as appealing as possible (esspecially in a leisure market that is as congested as Barton is). If a day / evening at the SCS is perceived to be too much of a hassle, neither Salford nor Sale will grow their crowds - those crowds will instead take their cash to the Trafford Centre, the local cinema or that big ski slope across the road.

Yes, there are lots of places to park nearby and lots of ways to buy tickets, but a large proportion of the people that Salford (presumably) want to attract aren't going to be inclined to look up local amateur RL clubs that might have a car park, or ticketing policies that are out of step with the majority of clubs.

The comparisons with supermarkets are a little clumsy but they are still valid. ASDA will design their car park based on the traffic patterns that they expect. They know what they are like at their busiest, and they are designed to cope. At the SCS, they know to expect several thousand supporters in a short period of time, so the car parking should be designed to cope much better than they currently are.

The purpose of comparing the two is to show that all of this 'excuse making' does Salford no favours. Businesses adapt, develop and invest based on the expectations of their customers. If there is a demand for people to pay for a ticket with cash, then that facility should really be provided. Salford, Sale and the SCS are too small to change consumer behaviour - it should be the consumers that change the behaviour of Salford, Sale and the SCS.

For clarity, I didn't totally disagree, but, perhaps part of Salford's access problems are in no small part to the 'success' of The Trafford Centre and its environs all that free parking attracting thousands of car journeys clogging up the M60? I would suggest that it is a location issue rather than a stadium management/club thing. if you drive to the stadium you haven't got rat runs to disperse traffic quickly the options are too limited.

I had the pleasure of visiting LSV last Sunday parked up and got away no problem. Admittedly the crowd was just over 2k and it was a Sunday and presumably many locals walked up but it can't be compared to Barton and the inherent infrastructure problems that that area has faced in recent years and that's the key together with the rest of the hinterland being a desert at the moment. if there was a restaurant or two and a ph on site then that would help as fans could be tempted to arrive early and leave later increasing the core traveltime easing the traffic flow.

Sure Salford need to address the match day experience but there is a finite extent to that control at the moment. such as cash turnstiles but beyond that it's difficult.

I'm not quite sure what Sale's gripe is, it is in the wrong part of town for their supporters and always was going to be especially on a Friday night and they would have known that

BTW if ASDA's car park is too busy get ready for another supermarket not more car parking at ASDA as some clever planning consultant will say that ASDA are over trading so there is a shortage of retail space. it doesn't quite work that way with sports clubs

I suspect the poor attendances for both clubs have much more to do with the poor quality of the teams on the pitch than anything else. In Sale's case I think they're doing pretty well to get 4 figure crowds to watch that ***te

In the last 6 years Salford have had only 2 home cup ties....in 2012 v Leeds it was 20% less than that seasons SL average, in 2011, v HKR it was 55% lower than that seasons average....I'm not surprised someone would be keen to use 'CUP" attendances to spin Salford in a positive light