I like the traditional grounds like Salford, Wilderspool and KR. It's nostalgic! I love changing ends at half time, the ability to move around and chat to different people. Now we are shepherded to our seats and that's where you will stay for the duration, possibly for years, with the same people week in and week out. The idea of fans mingling is disappearing and new fans don't know how to behave with/treat opposition fans. I think we have lost a lot for the sake of 2 hours of comfort.

That said, I hope that Salford's new ground helps to raise their profile in the city and brings them success. The game needs as many successful clubs as possible

Don't get me wrong, I wish Salford all the best with their plans, I just feel that their biggest problem will be attracting and keeping hold of 'new' fans.

I spend a lot of time in the Salford area working and the general impression I get is that Rugby League has a massive struggle getting people's attention when they have that big footballing neighbour on its doorstep. You certainly don't get that Rugby League 'buzz' that you feel in Wigan, St Helens, Warrington and, dare I say it, Widnes.

I think their marketing team has a massive job on its hands and if they can succeed in even doubling Salford's current crowd average then it will be a huge acheivement.

thats whatsisface then who's best mates with neil barker "journalist"

When Salford show ambition you get people on here saying why they shouldn't move into a new stadium, there's no point etc. If they decide to not build their new stadium and stay at the Willows then you'll get threads on here next year after they play Harlequins at home talking about the attendance, saying it's a disgrace, Salford shouldn't be in Super League and neither should Harlequins, they have no fans, Weaste is full of scallies and so on. And yet when I say Super League should be a 10 team competition (which Tony Smith seemed to also be advocating) then everyone says no we need more teams in SL not fewer!

If we want Super League to expand the only way forwards is for the weak links in Super League to improve. We can hardly claim that Warrington were anything special when we started talking about our new stadium in 1998. At that time we were usually near the bottom of the table like Salford are now and yes we might have had one good season when Jonathan Davies was with us four years earlier, but that was hardly a case for us being a big and successful club.....Salford had one good season a few years ago when they had Andrew Dunemann. The worrying thing for us when we started talking about a new stadium was that even when we were on top of the league for much of the 1993/94 season, our crowds were around the 5000 mark, so it was a hard sell for Peter Deakin to try and convince people (and sponsors) that we would have five figure crowds in the new stadium....

Salford for all its negative image, is a city which does have a future, the area around Salford Quays is top notch and the BBC is moving its media city there so it is a place which will get wealthy young professionals moving to it. At the moment we are in a difficult economic time but next time we enter a period of growth, Salford will be one of the parts of the north which grows quickly as investment moves in. A lot of northern cities face a grim future, sadly some of these are RL places like Bradford, which has no apparent potential but Salford does. So you can't blame Salford RL for trying to put something credible up there to at least try to capitalise on it, if they sat in the Willows with the image of flat cap pipe smokers in the Shed, they would never grow and just slowly sink down to the lower leagues like Swinton.

Their signings for next year look decent, Matty Smith looked quality against us last week and Saints are probably regretting letting him leave. Paleaaesina, Bailey and Vinnie Anderson are all first choice players in top teams this year. They aren't signing high profile big names on the whole they are getting understated consistent players eg Wild and Nero. Luke Patten was similar standard to Brett Hodgson in the NRL and is coming over at the same age Hodgson did, Hodgson ended up MoS. They aren't going to sign Lee Briers because it would leave us short of a halfback so unless we have a major coup about to be announced, and Briers is leaving to clear the way, that one can be written off.

First phase for the ground is 12,000 then they will take it from there, for a second phase and third phase of expending it up to 20,000 in the end, I think we'll keep it at 12,000 for some time though.

Heard this one to, but Bradford are linked with him as well?

I think between Bradford & Salford there arent any players left out of the rumour radar lol

Sally, what a good and well balanced post. Judgeing by some of the posts there are a few on here that don't have memories, or more than likely weren't around when you were neighbours of ours at the bottom end of the table.

As a Salford fan for too many years I am looking forward to next year already. On paper, we have the strongest squad we have had for years with a mixture of youth and experience. I too am hoping we can kick on from the new stadium like yourselves and Hull.

I personally don't want Lee Briers at Salford. He's certainly a fine player but we have enough cover in the halves.

All the best for tonight.

This is the same paper which reported earlier in the week that Ian Millward was going to Salford as assistand coach, only for Millward to issue a statement the next day saying it was the first he had heard and that he was going nowhere!

He denied the assistant coach job that is all

Can't be anyone from Warrington, article states TOP CLUB, not flash in the pan club who's mediocre success (2 mickey mouse cups) will soon be disappearing

Rumors that he did put in for the job, didn't make the short list so he said he didn't apply to get the Leigh fans back on his side. Seriously though, doubt we're getting Bries, hes to much of an important player for you and we've already got Smith and Holdsworth and Ratchford and Sneyd for cover.