Quote: John Gilbert Reds "I don't buy into the accessibility issue at all. Ok the ground isn't located within the middle of a housing estate with lots of parking available and routes of escape, but it is nowhere near as bad as people make out.
Sales poor crowds are a culmination of various things such as poor rugby, a stadium not in Sale and high ticket prices.'"
The hardcore will still turn up but your casual/floating fan is more likely to be put off from attending. These casual fans are the ones we need to attract for next season and beyond. A good example of the problems with Barton was highlighted by over 10k turning up at Leigh for Tonga v Cook Islands and 2 days later only 6k turning up at Salford for the more attractive USA v Scotland. The rugby league fan of the north west clearly decided that out of those games it was preferable to go to LSV than Barton and who can blame them.
The recent edition of Rugby League World published the results of their 'secret speccy' feature in which Gavin Willacy visited every ground in SL and ranked them on various criteria, much like Angela 'baby changing facilities' Powers did on Sky a few years back.
Needless to say, Barton finished bottom of the pile. Seems crazy that for years we were told The Willows was holding the club back and now we've moved to a ground which is still holding us back. That said, there is nothing we can do apart from try and improve things at Barton.