The crowds will come with lower ticket prices and a winning team! I took along two mates to the Wigan game and they paid £20 each on the night I think it was. Getting beat 26-0 with 24 mins to go they wanted to leave because it was rubbish and very cold! their response was ' not paying to watch that s##t again!' and who can blame them???
My son played for a local amateur team for a number of years and out of the whole team I would say 3 regularly attended Salford home games.
The only time you would see parents and players down at the Willows was when the team were on the pitch at half time and they got in on a freebie.
The apathy of the Salford public towards their only fully fledged professional sports team is appalling.
Plenty say they support the club but none go.
Regarding Friday nights.
Mr Koukash is in the Corporate entertainment industry and would want to make as much revenue from this as possible.
I can see Fridays staying with the odd big game on a Saturday.
Firstly "Manchester Red Devils", No, No and No again!!!! We are Salford....always will be. We have just been saved, why would we disappear straight away? I will not watch a team called Manchester.
Secondly, Prestwich Red, I know where you are coming from when you talk about apathy, but the point is that it is not just Salford who suffer from this. 2 other posters have commented on the fact that hundreds of kids turn up to training for amateur clubs around the country and only a handful actually watch the game regularly. The apathy is not so much towards Salford RL but is an apathy of SOME parents towards taking their kids out to do anything. I stress the word some because I don't want to tar all with the same brush but as a teacher first and a rugby coach second I see this all too often.
The kids I teach get a nose bleed if they leave the confines of their own immediate surroundings. For example; I took a group of kids to the Sale game on Friday (cos we got free tickets!!!!) on the way back to school in the mini-bus one of the kids asked "How long are we going to be?"
I replied "Do you not know where you are yet?"
"No" she replied.
We were at this point approximately 1 mile away from school and only 2 corners were turned before you could see the school building. Just to proove that kids don't go anywhere apart from their own little bubble.
I have my own ideas about the Junior Devils and school/ amateur team involvement on match days that I have presented to the club before the take over. Now that there is a new regime in place it will be interesting to see what happens.
Dr Koukash seems to really doing everything he can to make the Salford City Reds a force in Super League. I for one hope that Salford can really get a team together that can challenge on allfronts. However this wont be done overnight and will probably take 3, 4 or maybe even 5 years for the foundations, recruiting new players and the youth development to come to the fore. I wish you supporters and the Salford City Reds as a club all the very best in the future as you are a great RL club.
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