I know MikeGC - I post on the Sale forum as J Moon, Mike - Hello!
It really is sad what impact a load of bile from Stockport fans has had on people. I feared this day, Salford fans latching on to whatever rubbish they'd heard in the office. I'm not going into politics. I'm not a massive fan of Brian Kennedy if I'm honest. I don't agree with the way some of the Stockport dealings were handled, but they were in a position to fend for themselves in the end which is what they wanted and they f*cked it up.
You really couldn't meet a nicer bunch of fans than the Sale lot. Even the Stockport fans over on the Yellow Board admit that. Yet one of two idiots on here seem to have taken Mike's very genuine welcoming message as patronising. The majority on here seem to talk sense, even if it's not necessarily something I agree with. Most of it is well informed and people are entitled to their opinions.
I'm personally hoping it's a load of keyboard warriors, as I went to Salford vs Leeds with my Sale hat on and didn't get any stick. I spoke to a few people who were all nice enough with me and didn't even comment on it.
I hate that we're seen as a club who want to take over and dominate everything. We're a mid table team who average just less than 8,000 people. We're not Manchester City, trying to poach everything we can get, turning Hyde FC into their feeder club and rebranding them and changing their home kit to blue. The key word is in this thread title - co-tenancy. Where does it say we're going to come and wipe Salford out? Sure, Steve Diamond has a big gob on him and has talked about trying to become this Northern super club. That's just marketing though. It sells, it brings headlines, it's working to be fair. The papers and internet have been full of talk about Sale in the past 2 weeks.
I think you all need to realise the position most Sale fans are in. We're Rugby traditionalists too. We don't see the vision the club has a lot of the time. Most of us like being little old Sale. We don't want a name change, we don't want to be seen as trying to poach players from Salford's youth system like some people seem to have interpreted Steve Diamond's comments. We only have one chant and that's "SAY-ULL", none of us really like the Sharks branding idea, none of us are egotistical toffs who couldn't give a cr@p about Salford and hope you go bust or anything. A good fraction of our fans have already been to watch a Salford game. Some are talking about the idea of a joint season ticket and saying they'd watch both.
Most of us didn't want this move. Not in a disrespectful way to Salford. You're a great club with a great history. More the logistics. We didn't want to move to a ground in the middle of nowhere with hardly any public transport links, pubs nearby, playing on Friday nights when traffic is a nightmare. But we're here now. It's a modern facility that surely Salford cannot expect to function on their own. I'm sure most of you have the brains to realise from day one you weren't gonna keep it as your own forever. It's still called The Salford City Stadium, it's still your stadium too. Sure, live a pipe dream, convince yourselves Swinton or Uniteds Reserves would have been better. But it wouldn't. 2 Rugby teams playing 12 months of the year on it will bring in great income.
Personally I hope it works but after going through 37 pages I'm a bit disappointed at the reception we're getting. I really don't know what you think we are. Have a problem with Kennedy and how he's dealt with things in the past - sure, that's up to you. Even have a problem with Cheshire Sports, should you know the ins and outs of things. But Sale and its fans have never done anybody any harm. There's pages further down where some are taking the p!ss and calling us middle class, blah blah, the usual boring Union insults. If that's what you think of us then surely we're nothing to worry about? We're not Millwall. We just want this to work and for nobody to get shafted in the process.
To answer the question about where our fans come from, my answer would be:
Me personally, I'm from Baguley in Wythenshawe. There's quite a few who live round here and in other parts of South Manchester. A lot still come from Sale but the majority have an SK postcode as research has found out. This points to the fact that the move to Stockport worked and the reason why so many of us don't want to leave. Don't get worried by that, that's not to say the majority will have a Salford postcode in 10 years time. After all the locals aren't gonna want to watch kick and clap and no tries are they?
There's also a big percentage of fans from Macclesfield, Stoke, Crewe, Sandbach and other local areas, along with people from all over the show.
One thing you notice at Sale is the variation in fans. You see jerseys from every local Rugby club from Carlisle right through to South Cheshire. This in itself explains why a lot of us hate this idea of rebranding to become a super club. We already have a massive catchment area. Changing the name to something stupid isn't going to suddenly make people from Bolton go "oh hang on, I like Sharks, I watched a documentary on them last week. There's a Rugby team called Sharks down the road at The Salford City Stadium, lets go and watch them". They're warped if they think that's going to happen. I've seen plenty of Rugby League fans at our games too. Come along sometime, you might even get to see a try.
