When i was young and had no responsabilities sunday rugby was ace, Eccles weatherspoons then in the tav @ 12, con club, in the willows, watch the match back the tav, back in the con club and finish off in the hope / height bit of a salford sing song then stagger home @ 11:00 amazingly some players (mr Treacy n Mr Nicol) use to beat us into the hope on a regular basis.
I hung around with some good lads then of simular age who like me were young and hand no responsabilities (apart from KOBW making sure he gave himself enough time to get his last train home and Karlos making sure he woke up in time to deliver his post

)

Now i prefer fridays, work, get to the ground, couple of cheeky drinks in the club, watch the game, cheeky drink in the club, most of us have jobs/kids/morgages now so there is no OTT behaviour much anymore that and after fridays i have saturday and sunday to do other stuff

I can see both sides of the coin i can imagine traffic chaos if its not done right traffic wise @ barton but i surpose the club will make more money on friday in other ways than ticket sales corporate boxes ect

I also think the players prefer friday games, they train monday to wednesday, day off thursday, game day friday i think giving the players too much "thinking time" between finishing training friday and playing sunday didnt help our performances around that time

But what exactly is, a cheeky drink?

These days its a tomarto juice....got to get my 5 a day

Sadly the polic, local authority & RFL need to know well in advance so I'm not sure we can do this.

From this day forth, I shall know you and occasionally refer to you as a cheeky tomato...

Apologies for my deviance from the debate to something bordering trivially inane, but the said debate is completely arbitrary. The club will do what the club wants. Our perspective is irrelevant.

Well they would now Uniteds fixure list / Fa cup / European Championships / World Cup between February and say June, it just needs somebody to sit down with a sporting calendar and figure out how we can juggle the fixture around these events

The down side would be that it may effect the boys preperation time/ recovery as its advantage to play on a friday one week then and sunday the next, you get two more days to prepare as the other team may only have 6 days if they play Sunday -sunday

Hmm. Not a very productive contribution from me, I agree. Meh...

Sundays, for the love of God, Sundays. Getting home from Barton on a Friday night relying on public transport is going to be a bloody nightmare. I'll be sleeping in the Trafford Centre bogs I reckon!

Will it be any easier on a Sunday evening?

Can't see either being much fun?!?

Personally couldn't care less now I only live a 15 minute walk away

Thats the spirit fella _uck em all



TBH I don't think it will affect too many on here as most of us are victims anyway.

Now friday or sunday

I'd go with the Saturday evenings but it's probably very unlikely, aren't the weekend football times published months in advance (eg Sky/ESPN have bagsied their games to the end of November already), so fitting around them should be no problem. Getting across from Leeds on the Transpennine at 5pm puts me off along with the £25 entrance fee..

I'd have more chance of making the last train home and/or getting home before midnight on a Sunday, let's put it that way!

A Harvester pub would be the last place I would want to drink, plenty of choice in Peel Green and Patricroft.

I hope we play on Sundays but we can expect to have travel issues whenever we play. The M60 is a car park every evening and at the weekend and the rugby traffic will add to that. Anyone who commutes from Irlam knows how bad the traffic gets round Barton.

We all know that corporate sponsorship will dictate when we play.

Used to leave work on a Friday @ 18:00 in Cheadle and never once did I see any traffic on the M60 clock wise heading home, rush hour starts earlier on a Friday now.

And there's not a single pub on the A57 I'd go in anymore really apart from Wangies when they have a decent band or two on, settle for Eccles RL or the Harvester.

I was speaking to someone at the club a few weeks back and they told me that they were planning that Fridays were going to remain the primary time for the majority of games - a kind of 'weekend starts here, pop to the Trafford Centre before or after for food and drink' type approach for new fans.

Hopefully the travel survey may have swayed that a bit though as I can't really see it working. I'd much prefer Sundays myself - my kids love going but Friday nights makes it just too late a night for them.

If that's the case ChorltonRed, the Club is being a little blinkered. They'll lose out on a lot of new Families and away support. The traffic alone will make even some home fans think twice. Let's hope they have a re-think.

I know weve had a debate on this thread already in the past but i really cannot find a single positive with friday night rugby. It has to be Sundays. JW has been reported in saying the Friday night matches will generate more income especially from a corporate point of view. I have to disagree. Surely having Friday night rugby we would lose at least 25% of the gate reciepts from both sets of supporters. That should make up the difference in corporate if indeed there is any difference.

Surely the club want to be playing in front of more people in our 1st season in this new stadium, its got to be their main objective to get the attendances up, so why choose Friday nights ?. If the format was sundays i would take my Mrs and 2 young children, but now they choose the Friday night slot i would attend alone, and i think a lot of families will do the same.

I.m totally mystified

Agreed. Friday nights are going to keep families with young kids away, and away support from over the Pennines. I think it also limits the activities they could put on around the game to attract more supporters in, at least until the clocks go forward. A very poor decision for mine.

As much as I can understand why family’s will want to attend on Sundays I fully understand why the club has chose Fridays and I personally prefer them. The fact is it doesn’t matter what day we play on if we want attendances to improve we need to start wining games, a winning team will attract good attendances weather they play Friday Sunday or Saturday.

How many times during the season if we played on Sundays would we clash with United/City? Im not sure how many times we would clash but id hazard a guess at 3 or 4 games.

I bet if you compared Salford’s average attendances on Sundays compared on Fridays there would be very little difference, baring Catalan the last game as that was a one off. I would do this but don’t have the statistics to hand to work it out. Id actually like to know this as I may be wrong.

As for the corporate that will be a big chunk of out income stream so if we are going to get more money from corporate by playing Fridays then surely you would be stupid not to go along with it? At my work we have a corporate deal with Sale as they play Fridays if sale changed to a Sunday it wouldn’t work if you are a business man entertaining clients you want to do it on Friday after work not on a Sunday when you could be spending time with your family etc.

People also work on Sundays.

The fact is if you’re a fan you’re going to attend whenever they play. Our attendances will only get better if we become successful not by what day we play on.

The Original Red Devils. Sorry i strongly disagree. Why do you think we played Catalans on a sunday afternoon last season? It was because, if the fixture was played on the friday night, the attendance would of been well short of the 10147. Maybe around the 8000 mark.Thats the reason why the sunday afternoon was chosen by the club.

I also disagree with your comment regarding Salford supporters will attend no matter what day we play. Thats not true. I know supporters who pick and choose the games they attend due to the friday night fixture, obviously work and social happenings decide this.

However a winning team would do wonders for bums on seats i agree, but come on lets be realistic here, hope your not banking on a top eight finish.

We played on Sundays for years at The Willows and got poor crowds. We moved to Friday nights and still got poor crowds. If we are going after the family audience at the new stadium though it does seem strange to play on Friday nights.

IIRC and i may be wrong didn't we change from Sundays in 2005?

Our average attendance are below;
Sunday games

2000 - 4,452
2001 - 4,214
2002 - 4,199
2003 ?
2004 - 3,996

Friday averages;

2005 - 4,093
2006 - 4,820
2007 - 5,185
2009 - 4,467

That actually says to me more Friday games have actually seen a slight improvement in numbers compared to the Sunday games. Like i said i didn't think there would be much difference and i fail to see how playing on a Sunday would increase attendance. Plus on a Sunday you wouldn't have as much corporate income and would have to compete with United.

It works both ways for every person that cant attend on a Friday their will be someone who wont attend on the Sunday. So surley you can see why the club choose Fridays?

What was last years average?

Because the club would loose out on the corporate income if they played Sunday and to be honest it probably wont get that many more people few the gates as I've just posted so they would be loosing out on money.