Quote: Ave It! "Problem is Sale have a professional and very good marketing team behind the scenes.....'"
You forgot to mention that they have lots of money to back those campaigns up too. IIRC, the RFU also threw some money at them to both stage and promote the game at the Reebok and it wouldn't surprise me if the RFU make regular marketing contributions to them, can you imagine the RFL doing that for us, or any RL team for that matter? I think the RFL need to adopt a similar position to the RFU - who recognise that Sale are their only North West Premiership side surrounded by big name RL clubs trying to 'break' that dominance.
Sale aren't really targetting us Salford fans, they're targetting anyone with a sporting interest in Greater Manchester - our target audience too of course, but their ambition is wider than ours as they're promoting the whole game of RU against RL whereas we're pitching in an already saturated market, e.g. despite Salford being the closest SL club to Rochdale on the right side of the Pennines, I'm the only Salford supporter at my 8 year old Son's amateur club, there's Saints, Leeds, Bradford and Wigan fans there (now that has a familiar look doesn't it?) and their kids follow those teams but the real irony is that only my Son regularly goes to watch SL live, there was even an advert in the Oldham Chronicle last week for a Hudds Giants game. Those examples show that we can't ever hope to lure existing fans away from Saints, Wigan, Warrington etc. and the RFL need to understand how really bloody difficult it is even if Sale weren't in the mix and to some extent, they're the least of our worries. I think that if the RFL want a 'Manchester' conurbation team, i.e. us to succeed and pull in more fans then they should help us to at least mirror, or up the ante on, any marketing that Sale do and additionally declare Manchester, Salford and it's satellite towns a 'no go' zone for marketing for ALL other SL clubs.