The Match was on BT but packed empty seats on both sides of the ground and very few behind the sticks.

Highlighting the fact that people of both codes still not in love with Barton.

What can we do to make the Arena more accessible & attractive for the fans?

Marwan to own the Stadium for me & a change in the ticketing situation & the new road would help.

Play quality rugby with a talented team.

Accessibility is certainly an issue but that is being addressed. We're not much worse for that than many other grounds - try driving, parking and getting out of Wigan or HKR.

Start winning games.

A classic rugby union style rounded attendance of 4,000 according to the BBC website.

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.

I agree with you there mate, I think this can only be an excuse for away fans not to turn up as it is a ball ache getting off the car park, but surely as a home supporter you would figure out the best/quickest way of getting to and from the match.
In the first year at the stadium I had a car park season ticket, it was a bad experience for me but now i park at Eccles arlfc and its brilliant, 10 min walk from the stadium straight in the car and off home. there is plenty of areas to park around the area and if you plan ahead you'll find it a more pleasant experience.

Sale are perhaps realising what Salford did last year, in that the first season crowds at the new ground were inflated by people wanting a nosey at the new ground.

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.

They were crap last season as well so they're also probably experiencing the problems of attracting fans with a poor team. If we do manage a really good start to the season this year, it'll be interesting to see how our attendances towards the second half of the year compare to the previous two years.

At least things can be improved at Barton. With a decent access road the car parking problem will ease and there are other minor issues which are being addressed now. With a successful team the complaints about the stadium will die down. But don't worry - whatever happens I'm sure we will all still find things to criticise.

There were 7 paragraphs in a recent Man Utd fanzine complaining about various issues at Barton for Man Utd reserve games, making it 3 sets of unhappy fans/customers. Hopefully the penny will drop one day.

I always wonder if Securitas will try at some point and take over from Group4?

They run Charleroi airport and it's seamless, they are incredibly friendly and seem to only have half the staff of other airports but everything runs twice as well.

3 sets of unhappy fans? Sounds a little bit Daily Mail that. You're always going to get some people moaning who aren't happy with something, probably more a minority than majority.

After the Scotland v USA game I honestly couldn't find one thing to moan about. Food was decent, beer was decent and from leaving my seat I was on my way home in 15 minutes.

In Sale's case there may be more to it than just how inaccessible the stadium is. Looking on the Sharks forum, one or two people are grumbling about how dull they are to watch (even to the point of questioning the rules of the sport with a "I don't want us to turn into Rugby League but..." followed by a list of ways they'd like the sport to turn into Rugby League). It seems that that, combined with the location, is what's keeping fans away.

I guess the important thing, then, is to put something watchable on the field. If you do that, the stadium will suddenly become more accessible. As if by magic.

There are so many little things that could be improved though with a little bit of planning. The recent 'no parking' for the world cup game, then caving in on the day when faced with dozens of cars doing 3 point turns on the approach road a prime example.

As stated a winning side may see many of the so called issues disappear, however I fear we will be having the same discussions throughout next season, unless the club can persuade the stadium management company to start using a bit of common sense.

I'm pretty certain that the Doc with a full season behind him and no doubt someone who's done a decent report on the issues will go to the SMC and in his shy retiring way demand fixes be applied to issues that occur. Most of them are annoyingly small things that would be easy to fix like the food/drink situation, the transport problems are in hand and doubt there is anything can be done other than try and get a park and ride system working smoothly.