Stars Charge Onto the High Street

Salford City Reds stars Malcolm Alker, Nathan McAvoy and Junior Langi turned out at Debenhams in the Trafford Centre on one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year to help launch our new retail concession in the nation’s favourite department store.

After months of hard work the Reds closed the deal with the chain who will now use the experiment as a test model for the rest of the country. It is the first time Debenhams have stocked the kit of a local side as part of their commitment to the community and if successful the idea may be rolled out across the country.

With the players attracting a fair amount of female attention from passing shoppers a crowd soon grew – at one stage the entire cosmetics department arrived to have their photgraph taken with the boys!

Anne Latham from Debenhams said “Given the relationship that already exists between Salford City Reds and the Trafford Centre, it’s great that we’ve become the exclusive stockists for the Reds’ branded leisurewear. We’re really hoping it’s a big success.

With regular tannoy announcements across the store and handing out signed posters and posing for photographs in such a high profile location, the players continued to spread the City Reds word far further than normal. With the excercise an obvious success it was decided we’ll be repeating it again very soon. Watch this space for further details of in-store player appearances.

**Don’t forget our end of season sale is still on and great bargains can be picked up either at our regular retail outlet on Willows Road, or at Debenhams in the Trafford Centre.

Reds Stadium Back on the Agenda

Republished from www.salford.gov.uk

A new stadium for Salford City Reds is firmly back on the agenda with the application for a £130 million development in Barton due before Salford City Council’s planning panel in October.

A range of reports considering the impact the scheme will have on the environment, transport and also its potential economic and community benefits have now been received by planning officers allowing the application by Red City Developments, supported by Peel Holdings, to go to the next stage.

The application includes:

A 20,000 seater purpose built, state of the art stadium with access from the A57, Liverpool Road.

A 208 bed four star hotel with exhibition and conference space which would be integrated into the stadium structure.

A casino, also integrated into the stadium structure.

Other ancillary uses to the club including bars, restaurants, a museum, gym and swimming pool.

230,00 square feet of retail development such as furnishing, DIY and electrical goods stores.

Leader of the council, Cllr John Merry, says: “A new stadium is a must if Salford Reds are to compete with the Super League elite, but it is not only about Salford making its mark on the pitch. A new development on this scale would join the Lowry as an iconic image of a resurgent and proud city.”

Property giants Peel Holdings have drawn up ambitious plans for ‘Port Salford’ that would further regenerate the Barton area including a port alongside the Manchester Ship Canal, a freight terminal and associated commercial development. These proposals are currently being assessed.

Stakeholders, residents and other local people can make representations on the stadium plans up until the date it goes to panel in October. If members accept the proposals they will then be passed to Government Office North West. It would decide whether a public inquiry was necessary or whether Salford City Council could go ahead and grant permission for the plans.

Styling the Nation

One of the UK ‘s busiest department stores, Debenhams in the Trafford Centre, has forged the first ever local partnership with its neighbouring sports team, Salford City Reds.

The deal will see the flagship store become a stockist of the officially branded Reds’ kit with items going on sale at the store in one of the busiest shopping weekends of the year over this August Bank Holiday.

As the Reds near the end of the regular Super League season, fans and shoppers alike will be able to purchase replica jerseys at the specially discounted price of £25.

Reds captain Malcolm Alker, along with Nathan McAvoy and Sean Rutgerson will be on hand to meet shoppers in the store between 12 noon and 1pm this Saturday 27 August – so that those of you who need to have completed your shopping before the Powergen Challenge Cup Final, don’t miss out!

The scheme is shaping up to be a trial model for Debenhams stores throughout the UK , and if it proves successful, many other branches could follow suit and link up with their local sports teams.

Anne Latham from Debenhams said “Given the relationship that already exists between Salford City Reds and the Trafford Centre, it’s great that we’ve become the exclusive stockists for the Reds’ branded leisurewear. We’re really hoping it’s a big success.

Reds Successfully Trial Futuretech

Friday night not only saw a great win for the Reds, securing their Super League position for 2006, it also saw the a world first with the successful trial of state-of-the-art mobile ticketing hardware, allowing fans to pre-purchase their matchday ticket and have it delivered to their mobile phone.

50 fans from Salford and 50 from Wakefield, as well as the members of the press and VIP guests were invited to try out the new system, which is being looked at as part of the club’s view to use the best available technology when they move to their iconic new stadium at Barton.

The system delivers a barcode via SMS text message to the purchaser who then arrives at the ground and scans this barcode at the special ticket kiosk which connects to the central database and then dispenses a personalised matchday ticket – all within a few seconds.

The system allows tickets to be instantly re-issued should the user accidentally delete the text message, or worse, lose their mobile phone.

The Reds will now sit down with ticketing partners TS.com and the suppliers of the new technology Trinity Mobile to discuss how to further push the new system in the future.

Luke Robinson Interview

Salford City Reds are preparing for the Friday night engage Super League X clash with Wigan Warriors with renewed vigour and energy. Thanks to the enforced break in the Super League competition to accommodate the Powergen Challenge Cup semi-final weekend, the Reds will go into this evenly matched contest fit, rested, and raring to go.

Having already visited the JJB Stadium in the very first round of the competition, and then entertaining the Warriors at the Willows on the late May Bank Holiday in Ian Millward’s first game in charge for Wigan, the Reds are already very much aware of the Warriors’ strengths and weaknesses, and perhaps no one more acutely aware than former Wigan favourite, Luke Robinson.

Many of the Wigan faithful were stunned when Luke left the Cherry and Whites and made the switch to Salford , but he feels it’s a move that has paid off. Working under the watchful eyes of Karl Harrison, Luke is rapidly growing into one of the best young British players in the game and his coach is convinced it’s merely a matter of time before the lively scrum half is organising the play of the GB squad.

Robinson himself has bags of ambition, and with his obvious talent why not? As he explained, “It’s always good to be put forward for international recognition, and at the end of the day it’s the pinnacle of most professional’s careers. I’ve got a job to do for Salford though, and at the moment, that’s what I’m concentrating on.”

“I don’t really remember too much precise detail about the game there back in February – just remember it was awful conditions and we were all changing the studs in our boots to compensate for the pitch. I copped for one or two off the ball incidents, but I don’t know if that was specifically aimed at me as a personal thing. It’s more likely that they were just trying to disrupt my game because I’d had a lot of ball early doors, and as a forward, well it’s just your job to try and stifle the playmakers so that they’re not allowed to influence the game too much. We did ok, really and matched their efforts for most of the match. The result only started to slip away from us in the last 15 minutes or so.”

Obviously, the televised game at the Willows was another relatively close encounter, but the odds were probably always stacked in Wigan ‘s favour, by virtue of the fact that Ian Millward had taken over. “It’s really weird,” said Robinson, “because it always seems that when a new coach takes over, no matter what club or who the coach is, that first game they always seem to get the win. I don’t know if it’s because players raise their game in an effort to impress, or what but it just seems to work out that way!”

“We’d seemed to have got in a bit of a rut with results in May, and things weren’t going our way. You know, little things, like in the Bank Holiday game when I put a kick through to Cliff Beverley and instead of it bouncing up, it stayed low and Kris Radlinski then ran it back and offloaded to Brett Dallas who went on to score! Phil Clarke often says it in his commentary that sometimes it’s not what happens in the game that’s pivotal to the result, but the way a team reacts, and I think that’s maybe been our downfall on certain occasions. It seemed as though when a mistake happened the other team would nearly always capitalise on it and score, but now when things aren’t going our way, we react positively, we pull together and are not allowing teams to gain that advantage. So maybe it’s true what they say about making your own luck.”

And what of the “rest” provided by the break from Challenge Cup encounters? Well Luke thinks it could be just the tonic, “Sometimes a break can totally disrupt a team’s momentum, but I think for us, like earlier in the year when we went to North Wales, the break’s allowed us to re-group, get a few more injuries cleared up, step back and assess where we were going wrong. So I think this will mean we’re completely refreshed for the encounter. I’ve been trying to persuade Karl that the trips away are the key to it all, and that perhaps the club should take us all somewhere like Ibiza ! Don’t think he’s sold on the idea at all though! Joking aside, I think there’s actually only Kevin McGuinness now who’s not fit for selection. It does everyone good when there’s competition for places.”

When pressed about Wigan ‘s danger men, straight away Luke singled out Terry Newton for special mention, “They’ve got strike players all over the park really, but I’d say on his day Terry Newton is really the man we’ve got to keep an eye on. When he’s in the mood, he can just totally blow teams apart. So we’ve got to ensure we minimise his impact on the game and counteract that threat. Dennis Moran and Danny Orr can also make the team tick – they are possibly two of the best half backs around.”

“It should be a good game. We’re pretty much at full strength as are they. Last time they made a point of saying how many injuries they had, but we had just as many. We just didn’t receive as much coverage as them highlighting it.”

“They lost loads of fairly senior players in pretty much one go. The likes of Adrian Lam, Terry O’Connor, Mick Cassidy, Gary Connolly and of course Andy Farrell, but that shouldn’t be an excuse – the club made that decision to let them go, so if it has caused problems, they perhaps should have managed the situation differently.”