Salford lads who have played for the club.

Quote: Bigpev "you only have to look down Trafford Road to see the problem, but over the last 40 years i have played with some brilliant players at school who could have made a career out of rugby league but were not interested in rugby league. Salford has never had the rugby league community that the pits brought to a City or town, locally just look at Swinton more rugby league heritage than Salford, then look at Leigh, Wigan St Helens all pit towns, with large active miners welfare clubs in the past that fed the rugby league appetite.
The schools all played rugby league in my day and the PE teachers were very keen on Rugby league and many played or came from Rugby League areas, today that is not the case in many schools and rugby league is not coached as enthusiastically as it was then in my humble opinion with many other different sports being tried at many schools which have less injury risk.'"

Bigpev, you have hit the nail firmly on the head.My two lads went to school at St James's in farnworth, theonly option they had was to play rugby union because the LFA for that area did a deal with Bolton RFU to provide the coaches and league structure so Bolton schools could play rugby.This was despite much moaning from my son to his PE teachers who simply stood around and watched the RU coaches taking training.Going back to when I was at Cromwell Rd in winter you either plyed soccer or Rugby Union and Cromwell had some pretty good teams and produced at that time two or three good players who eventually went on to play for the Lions the Haliday bros Les and Mike, Steve Snape and Mark Sheals to name but four, now I don't even think they play any games against the other local schools.Disgrace really, but little wonder why both Swinton and salford have few local representatives nowadays.