Ideal would be getting Bradford/Leigh at 'home', sure to bring a large number of fans, some good quality players and going to be a tough uncompromising game.

A fan who is watching the game for the first time wants to see as much physicality as a run away score line, FuiFui V Tasi/Hock/HH would offer that.

I once read an article about Peel. To use the business-type phrase, they 'take the long view' in that they don't necessarily expect the projects they get involved in to start making money straight away. They're prepared to wait years, even decades. The fact they appear unwilling to sell their share in the stadium suggests they still smell money in it.

I think the city's problem is that they're in damage limitation over it. It's unlikely they'd recover their outlay if they sold their share now, and to do so would be to hand another opportunity to Coun. Garrido to have a fecking good moan about something. I think her desire to change the past prevents the city ever moving forward with the stadium.

Are people overstating our supposed level of bargaining power over the stadium? We've paid no rent since moving in, and the first time we are expected to pay up the club are openly looking at other options.

Regarding the apathy of the Salford public, let's have a couple of years with top half finishes and see what happens before declaring it as a total write off.

Would have been interesting to see how ST sales had gone with a full off season spent marketing the arrival of Locke.

Whenever I've heard her being interviewed, I get the impression she's probably single-handedly responsible for keeping the Tories as far away from having any form of control in Salford as it's possible to be. It's almost as if she's a Labour double-agent, except Labour aren't as sophisticated as that.

On the stadium, remember that it's currently crapping money out of every orifice like the plague is in town, and has had to be bailed out a couple of times. This means that the city's outlay is now more than that initial £13 million. It also means anyone would be daft to take it on, particularly at a price that would cover the city's costs. (By the way, does it actually [ifeel[/i like a £26 million stadium?) Peel's long game may be related as much to the influence it might bring them over other construction projects they want in Salford as to what the stadium itself could eventually earn. Marwan's smart, and I doubt he'd be willing to pay as much for it as the city would need in order to keep Coun. Garrido happy. Seems like a bit of an impasse at the moment.

Wasn't the £13,000,000 including the building of the infrastructure and units surrounding the stadium?

A council doesn't always make money on every project though, some are investments in the future of certain areas, if they sold up getting serious new coffers into the bank and then the area was invested in my the Doc/Peel then surely they have done the job we all expect a council to do for the local community?

I'm basing my thought on what happened with Manchester Storm*. Early on the crowds flocked to see them hammer teams - the crowds had no preconceptions and didn't really know anything about the quality (or lack of) of teams like Bracknell, Ayr, Telford & Blackburn, they just wanted to be entertained by seeing their team win, and win well. How that would translate to an atmosphere for an RL game with a decent sized crowd of newbies is unknown. The atmospere for such a game at Barton would be dire, and that's partly due to us existing fans knowing that it's no big deal to be able to steamroller lower opposition, but the newbies don't have that same world-weariness about them. You get it at Barton sometimes when the kids in the East Stand who are in for some schools/juniors activity are clearly getting more excited about what's going on on the pitch than many in the South Stand.


* And yes, let Manchester Storm also serve as a warning to those thinking that Manchester is the sporting promised land.




Oddly I can't find that answer online despite being sure I remember articles with Wilkinson and John Merry showing the "anchor tenant" agreement being signed. What I do remember is that when they announced that Sale were coming on board, Sale had a longer lease - Sale's is 25 years, so I'm guessing ours may be 15 (I seem to remember something about 5-year break/review clause).

Anybody who attended the St Thomas church meeting Dec 2012, may recall Wilkinson confiding Salford had been courted by Richard Leese in the late 1990's as a tenant for Maine rd.
The implication was the threat to leave the city led to a closer involvement with the club and ultimately to the rented stadium we are wallowing in today and the demolition of our ancestral home.
one wonders how our fortunes would have fared had Wilkinson actually carried out the threat, secondly if the Dr threatened a similar action I doubt whether the council would or could stand in his way considering the ' monetary machinations ' of their past financial backing.
Facing facts, to 95% of the current population has zero interest in the club or the sport , when the club is mentioned along civic lines it's as a money draining parasite, responsible for a white elephant stadium.
It's not a scenario I would support , if financially it was felt playing outside the city would prove advantageous, ( or lose less money ) , but it has precedent , Broughton Rangers - to Belle Vue Rangers.

As other people have mentioned , it ramps up the pressure for the team to be successful and pull in bigger attendances next season , use it or lose it ?

Maybe you should turn off your computer and go outside, then. I know a few people from in and around Droylsden. They're all aware of both the sport and our club.



I'm not suggesting otherwise. That's half my argument. The attraction has to be there, more than an invitation, in my experience. The attraction isn't there if the team's no good.



The whole "Red Devilution" thing in the build up to that was a marketing campaign, come and see the new era and all that. I know people who came to that game on the back of it who haven't been back since. As it is, I don't blame the club for trying something new and, believe it or not, I'm not dead set against it, although I'm not 100% keen on the idea. I just don't think it's the promised land people think it is.



I'm basing it on Mancunians I know from watching other sports, who always look out for Salford's results, always ask me about everything and show a keen interest in the club. Mention that they should come to a game and have a look and suddenly the excuses start, or it's a flat out case of "naah, can't be d, maybe if they start doing well." I'm not denying there's people out there who don't know about the club or the stadium (I've been told FC United's new ground next to the motorway looks impressive a couple of times...) but from experience I wouldn't say it's the majority. The majority either won't come unless the team does well, or is in a big, important game, or would rather watch Wigan/Saints/Warrington. That's the big hurdle we need to get over.



As I've already said, I'm not dead set against it and I can see why it's being done. And you know what? It could be a success and attract a load of new supporters who flock to the City of Salford Stadium on a regular basis. But it could just as easily attract people who go along for the novelty value with no interest in coming to another game or even just fall flat. That's the risk you take, though, I guess.

GT you make far more sense when posting under this alias.

Possibly, but I'm still not convinced. Watching a team run 50+ points past the opposition might appeal to kids - giving the team a kind of invincible super hero vibe - but I'm not sure it would work for the more discerning punter. I suspect the attraction of something new and American would have been a factor in drawing people to watch the Storm, whereas RL doesn't have that, and I'm not sure serving up a 'lambs to the slaughter' event would be as attractive.

As far as I'm aware, the stadium cost £26 million, so the city's share was the £13 million.

I think the problem is that for the city to sell up, it would have to recover that outlay or the letters page in the Advertiser would go ballistic, but, given that the stadium makes a loss, why would anyone pay that much for it? And it isn't really benefitting the local community. Salford Red Devils is a private business. Would you be happy to see the city build a £13 million superstore and then sell it to Tesco for less than that? It's the same situation. In the long run, the presence of that stadium or that superstore may bring some limited regeneration to the area, but at the cost of giving a huge amount of council tax payers money to a private business, which doesn't look good.

Salford Council might be making a loss from the actual stadium, but they'll more than recoup this through sales and rental income from the surrounding land and future retail/leisure facilities.

A point to be wary of if the plan is to start to draw support from East Manchester. For 10 years I worked on/with projects related to the regeneration of the area, many based around job creation, training and increasing people's skills and employability. Broadly speaking it was an ongoing struggle to get people to go out of the area (for job interviews, training courses etc) because for a few generations there was lots of industry and most people in the area worked close to where they live. Projects would find people in Beswick saying that they couldn't/wouldn't travel to Higher Openshaw, let alone places like Trafford Park and Wythenshawe where there were big industrial estate with jobs.

It's over 5 years since I was working with these projects, and Metrolink has probably opened it up a bit to the wider area, but I think that if Salford want to attract new support from Manchester, then East Manchester might not give the richest pickings (but there's not really any other stadiums to play at).

So that makes it ok then?