what a fantastic achievement. to play 350 games and at the one club. salford supporters and rugby league supporters take your hats of to malcolm alker. especially playing in front of some of the worst supporters wekk in week out. and i only mean SOME.

Please no on both accounts.

Great Achievement

Had his critics recently but I'd class him as a legend

Ex Andy Wilson this morning :-


Malcolm Alker ponders a move after 350 games for Salford City Reds

• Salford offer Malcolm Alker coaching job next year
• Captain and hooker reluctant to give up playing



Salford City Reds captain and hooker Malcolm Alker has been a one-club man, but that may change next season. Photograph: Carl Recine/Action Images

Malcolm Alker has prepared for his 350th appearance for Salford this weekend in the knowledge that at precisely the moment his only club can finally look ahead to a new dawn, his own time as a City Reds player is almost certainly drawing to a close.

Alker had just turned 20 when Salford first unveiled plans to leave the Willows for a new stadium near the Trafford Centre, their only hope of competing with the nearby heavyweights Wigan, Warrington and St Helens on equal terms. Now, after more than a decade of delays and false dawns, bulldozers are finally on site – as anyone who has driven around the M60 motorway to the west of Manchester in recent weeks can confirm.

But the club's 31-year-old hooker and captain – the most consistently industrious player in the Super League, who averages around 45 tackles a match and has regularly topped 900 in a season – is reluctantly thinking about moving on.

He is in the last year of his contract and Salford have offered him the chance to join Shaun McRae's coaching staff next season. But before dragging his battered body into another formidable test in tomorrow night's televised match against St Helens, Alker said: "I'm not sure whether I'm ready to hang the boots up yet. There is still too much burning inside me to put it out."

That amounts to a "come and get me" message that should prove highly attractive to a range of Championship clubs with Super League ambitions, such as Leigh, Widnes and Barrow.

Alker remains as frighteningly fit and masochistically tough as ever. He was the Super League's leading tackler last season with 981, just short of the personal best he set in 2001 when he became the first player to break four figures, and he went close to breaking the Super League match record of 66 held by the former London Broncos forward Steele Retchless in Salford's defeat at Castleford earlier this season.

McRae confirms that Alker still refuses to be beaten in any of the club's internal tests. "He's an inspirational character, and to make it to 350 games the way he plays is a phenomenal achievement," McRae said. "There are numerous stories here about him coming back from injuries ridiculously quickly – playing the week after having his appendix out, crazy stuff like that. I would like to think the other guys could give Malcolm something he can remember fondly this weekend."

That will not be easy against a St Helens team who have won six consecutive matches since their painful Good Friday defeat by Wigan, sneaking into the top three and the Challenge Cup quarter-finals almost unnoticed.

It has not all been plain sailing off the field, with their coach, Mick Potter, announcing that he will return home to Australia at the end of the season, and the former Saints captain Paul Sculthorpe causing a stir by welcoming that decision and criticising Potter's methods, despite Sculthorpe being an employee of the club. But Potter has been predictably unconcerned, pointing out – quietly – that "I'm here to coach, not to strut".

Jonny Lomax, one of the young players with whom he has worked so closely since succeeding Daniel Anderson at Knowsley Road last season, returns from a shoulder injury at Salford, and may yet have time to press for a place in the England squad for next month's international against France.

in case anyone hasn't seen this, there is a very interesting video on sky sports website about Malc

[urlhttp://www.skysports.com/video/inline/0,26691,12780_6152381,00.html[/url

Well done to Malc for a tremendous achievement.