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Somebody please shoot me, it makes a mockery out of one of the worlds greatest and oldest cup competitions, why on earth would you give up home advantage!! It all points to moving away from the Salford tag.

Yes we need to increase out fanbase, but this just won't work. How many neutrals from Manchester turned up to the magic week? He needs to put a sop to it!

I think what is making a mockery out of one of the worlds greatest and oldest cup competitions is the stay away supporters and the embarrassing attendance figures.

I don't think you can blame Marwan for considering taking a CC game on the road, he's probably of the opinion of nothing ventured nothing gained. Even if a couple of hundred new spectators turn up, its a couple of hundred more than we would have got at Barton.

I imagine most Salford fans, like yourself will think it's a further indication that Marwan wants to change us into a Manchester named club. I see it as our owner positively taking the game to one of the biggest cities in the UK, in hope of attracting further supporters. If the club get into local schools and youth clubs in the area before hand, I am sure it could work.

Let's all pray for an away draw.

I'm grateful to Koukash for saving us but this is stupid, he's taking some bad advice from Mr Vickers I suspect.

The premise of this plan is that people in Manchester are going to say "hey, look the Red Devils (hardly Salford anymore!) are playing near us, lets go and watch them its a great opportunity". When, in reality, Salford is hardly a million miles away anyway and if they were desperate to watch us then they would just make the short trip down to the A J Bell anyway. I doubt we'll attract any new fans through this and Salford is hardly a million miles away and I travel further to games than people in Manchester would have to in order to get to the AJ Bell anyway. Playing it at the small stadium near the Etihad is where were rumoured to be playing apparently - count me out!!

Call me a cynic, but I'd love our club to grow but this wont work and, to be honest. I hope it doesnt. I dont want any more of our games moved even further away from Salford and it's a kick in the teeth to regular fans!

Totally agree.

The Club seems to be damned if they do, damned if they don't. I'm glad that the Club appears to be more proactive in getting in fans. There is no point sitting back and thinking 'If we have a great season they'll all be flooding back.' Great if they do, but deliberately going after fans with ideas such as this can only benefit us. If it doesn't we haven't lost anything. Don't see the point in moaning about it, although you're guaranteed, as Salford fans, a good percentage will.

Imagine this, we draw 2 away games, get into the quater final and draw Wigan at home. MK then decideds to take it on the road to Manchester.

Lot of 'ifs' there though isn't there?

And your point is anyway?

I think the issue is, most people in East Manchester probably don't even know that Salford Red Devils exist. With the idea being that once they do, they'll realise Barton isn't a million miles away.

I don't think it's a kick in the teeth at all, we'd all travel as far as Barrow, Whitehaven, Hemel and London if we were drawn there in the CC so what's the difference in going 10 miles across Manchester?

It's a typical Salford fan attitude of "it wont work" and "I doubt we'll attract any new spectators doing this", doing nothing and staying at Barton hardly did anything for our 2,630 attendance vs Widnes (with a good following from the Vikings) this season did it?

i don't see what the problem is at the end of the day were not exactly filling the Aj Bell stadium. So to promote Salford were trying something different and being proactive. Afterall last season we managed around 2500 v Widnes and most of them were probably Widnes fans!

We might as well play Wigan at Wigan, we'd have just as much of winning the game there then in Manchester at least at home there's always some hope. Home advantage shouldn't be underestimated. Anyway no matter what we say, he'll do what he piggin well wants.

You're missing the point.

It's an idea to try and catch a few new fans to drag them back to Barton. You could drive ten miles in each direction from Barton and there will be people that have never heard of us. That's pretty criminal, even if most of them never come. To want it to fail says a lot about the mentality of some Salford fans.

Just to play Devil’s advocate: there is already precedent for this. Salford took a match to Old Trafford in the 1950s with the hope of drawing a big crowd, but it ended up being a disappointment with terrible wet weather thought to have affected the attendance.

However, I can’t say that this doesn’t make me feel a little uneasy.

Another way of looking at it would be to say that it stands a team in good stead in the CC if they can play at neutral grounds.

You see? There's plenty of ways you could look at it negatively or positively.

I would agree with those sentiments if we were still at the Willows, however I don’t think we have any home advantage at Barton at all. We haven’t made it a fortress in the slightest since we moved in, in fact how many times have we turned over any of the “top” sides at home since we’ve played there?

And if we take games on the road then it never will get chance to become a fortress.

At the ned of day everyone has their own opinions, I just don't agree with it. With the lack of anything Salford anywhere on the playing shirt, merchandise, the website always refers to us a Red Devils and now talk of taking a game to Manchester! I’m slightly concerned about the docs intentions that’s, maybe I’m being cynical, but with him you just never know.

You see, I know its aimed at geting fans which they have to be praised for. The reality is though the best way to get fans until we have a winning team is to promote in Salford itself. At the minute, we're failing to advertise well and properly near our own stadium.

Also, the idea that we have to go to the East Manchester to play as no one there knows we even exist is extremely laughable and short-sighted. It was only 6 MONTHS ago that the whole competition played there for Magic Weekend. The Magic weekend also had more publicity around the city from the RFL than we could ever achieve as a club. And, with this in mind, our attendances hardly picked up after Magic and that should be a precursor for why this will be a failure sadly.

With last years top 8 entering the cup a round later this year, our most attractive tie would be against a bottom 4 SL side, with us more likely to be drawn against a championship opponent.

The Red Devils vs Dewsbury at the Ethiad Campus. Can't see this one packing them in.

As i've said, if playing in East Manchester was suddenly going to miraculously boost our attendances it would have done so after Magic weekend when the city had (although not loads) more publicity than our club could manage.

It wont work, its a nice gimmick and a nice way of the administration saying "at least we tried" but the writing is on the wall, sadly.

Catalans at home, at the Nou Camp. Can we count this towards our attendance figures?

A big danger is, if it goes ahead and the Manchester stadium is a FULL house
Will he then seriously relocate ?

Where would it be though, overkill using either of the big football grounds, I suspect the smaller venue at the Eastlands complex or the new lower tier football ground I've heard something about.

We can hardly blame the Doc for wanting to try something different, if we were filling Barton week in week out he'd not need to go looking for new fans, but we aren't so he does.

simply really.

I agree there is more that could be done with regards to advertisement within Salford, but this is being addressed at the moment and some very positive plans are being put in place.

Ok, so the whole competition played there for the Magic Weekend but how did that help increase the popularity of Salford Red Devils? Just because we played a game there, it doesn't necessarily mean East Manchester now know we exist. I am genuinely shocked you think the RFL did a better job at advertising the weekend than Salford could do as a club. What advertising was done in and around East Manchester? How many schools etc were visited?

You simply cannot compare, the Magic Weekend was only marketed in and around RL circles as a yardstick for any future Salford game taken on the road. Plus it isn't an ideal format to attract new supporters to is it? If you've never watched a sport before, you don't want to be paying for a ticket for 3/4 games of said sport!

In and amongst all this, lets not forget the fantastic work the club are currently doing IN Salford. I know players have spent the last week attending local amateur clubs presentation evenings, as well as selling poppies and opening the ice rink at MediaCity;UK. When you have a city next door with a population almost double that of Salford, it would be daft not to explore and market.

In favour
but only if marketed correctly and that will be difficult as the lead in time for cup games is minimal.

Fair enough then, lets just all pack up our bags and move to Manchester tomorrow where we're guaranteed 20,000 attendances at every match



In all seriousness though, if we did play a one-off game at the Etihad training ground, what would be judged to be a success? If some of the fans who are advocating this really want to see if it will work it would be better if the regulars stayed away and we could judge how many 'new' fans turned up.

At the end of the day, I understand that a large proportion of our supporters try to prove "top redness" by agreeing with everything the regime does since Koukash got on twitter, but agreeing with this when none of you had previously advocated it or anything similar makes some of you look like sheep.

I don't think it's about who we play it's more of inviting people to watch the game to start with, people from Gorton Droylsden won't have a clue if dewsbury are good or not? We MUST try this its better than sitting still hoping, if crowds don't rise were finished.