Long-Serving Christine Earns Her Retirement

Club Secretary Christine James retired from the City Reds today after an astonishing 26 years at The Willows.

Known throughout the world of Rugby League Chris has worked tirelessly for years to ensure the day-to-day running of the club, even down to preparing new houses for overseas players to move into and organising medical staff for games and she will be greatly missed by staff and players alike.

It was a tearful farewell at this afternoon’s special presentation before she headed off to Manchester for a celebration night out with the rest of the reds’ staff.

Having safely seen the Reds return to Super League Christine can now get her feet up and enjoy her retirement and everybody at the Reds wishes her and partner John all the very best for the future and would like to thank her for her tremendous hard work over such a long period of time.

Cheerleaders In Action Beside The Seaside

Good luck to the Red Hot Sparklers who this weekend travel to Blackpool to participate in the UKCA Open Pom Dance Championships.

The current UK National Champions the Red Hot Sparklers took the title in March of this year, a wonderful feat considering that all the girls (aged 12-15) were all performing together for the first time.

With the National Championships again scheduled for next march, the girls welcome the opportunity to dance this weekend as they continue their preparations for the 2009 season.

We will speak to Head Coach, Suzanne Roberts over the weekend and let you know how the girls do next week.

Reds To Face Rhinos In Florida Clash

National League One Champions, Salford City Reds are heading back to the USA for their pre-season training camp in the New Year, in preparation of the 2009 engage Super League, and will face Leeds Rhinos in a USA spectacular on Saturday 17th January at the University of North Florida in Jacksonville.

We have been using Jacksonville for the past five years and regard it as our permanent pre-season training camp and a wonderful place to train.  The January fixture offers a great opportunity to take on the current World Champions as we prepare for the 2009 season.

Returning to the sunshine state for the sixth year, the Reds will face a twelve day training camp before taking on the Carnegie World Champions in a Rugby League stampede billed as ‘The World Champions v The National Champions’,  sponsored by Leeds Met Carnegie, title sponsors of the Carnegie Challenge Cup and Carnegie World Club Challenge.

Reds Director of Football, Steve Simms said: “We have been using Jacksonville for the past five years and regard it as our permanent pre-season training camp and a wonderful place to train.  The January fixture offers a great opportunity to take on the current World Champions as we prepare for the 2009 season.

“After winning the three trophies available to us this season, we look forward to what will be a tough encounter as we build up to the Super League competition.”

The Reds return to the top flight of European Rugby League after being awarded one of 14 franchises to compete in the engage Super League competition and the match against the Rhinos will form a major part of their preparations, although the game will be played over four 20 minute quarters to accommodate local media and make the game more familiar to local spectators.

The Reds are currently looking into the possibility of an official supporter’s trip and will release further details as soon as they are available.

Lottery Winners – 29/10/08

Now’s the time to find out if you are one of this week’s big winners on the Reds’ Golden Bond lottery. Each week you could win up to £10000 for a single £1 stake…think of how you could spend that money in the run up to Christmas.

And, if you buy a Season Ticket before the festive period we’ll even thrown in 10 complimentary weeks giving you the chance to scoop the top prize without paying a penny. Read more

Foundation Starts REDS Up Project

Salford City Reds’ Foundation has recently begun its latest community project that will see new coaches, players, match officials and volunteers emerge to help grow the sport of rugby league across Salford, Manchester, Trafford, Bolton and Bury. The £150.000, Read more

England Ready For Tough Aussie Encounter

Courtesy of the RFL

England’s narrow victory over Papua New Guinea last weekend will have removed the odd spot of rustiness and given the team areas to work on for the rest of the week as they prepare for their second World Cup fixture against hosts Australia.

This is the according to Leeds Rhinos stand off Danny McGuire who played a starring role from the bench in England’s 32-22 win over The Kumuls in Townsville.

Speaking to englandrl.co.uk at a reception in Melbourne, the 25 year old former East Leeds amateur, said: “I thought PNG played really well and took it to us.  They were a lot better then we estimated, but the game did allow us to get a lot of our rustiness out.

“A lot of the players hadn’t played since the Grand Final and you could probably see that with how we performed.  As a team we’d not played together since the mid-season test against France so it was nice to get a run out. Hopefully we’ve got the rustiness out and we can kick on now and put in a good performance against Australia at the weekend.”

Although the England team were in the air at the time of Australia’s convincing 30-6 victory over New Zealand, McGuire has managed to see the highlights and thinks the hosts are looking pretty good.

“They looked really impressive. You know it’s always going to be a tough encounter every time you play Australia and they looked to have hit form already in the early part of the tournament.

“It’s going to be a tough game for us on Sunday, but we weren’t really pleased with how we performed up in Townsville against PNG so we’ve got a lot of areas we can work on. I’m sure with the quality of players we’ve got in our squad we can improve and put it right for Sunday.”

England’s second game of the Rugby League World Cup against Australia on Sunday 2 November is live on Sky Sports 1 with coverage starting from 8:30am.

Live commentary of the game is also available on BBC Five Live and highlights will be shown on BBC2 on Sunday afternoon between 1.00pm and 2.00pm

Highlights of all Rugby League World Cup matches are available on the BBC Red Button, online at www.bbc.co.uk/rugbyleague and also via the i player.

For more exclusive behind the scenes interviews with England players and coaching staff from Australia, please visit www.englandrl.co.uk

Austin Wilkinson Sponsor New RedPlanet

Following the recent launch of the Reds website for the 2009 Super League season, the club can confirm that Austin Wilkinson & Sons Ltd are the official RedPlanet sponsor for 2009.

Having been a member of the chairman’s club last season the sponsor was decided by prize draw of all members at the Chairman’s club gala dinner on Friday 26th September 2008

James Wilkinson Managing Director, who also currently sponsors of the Red Hot Flames, the Reds official cheerleaders commented:

“This is a wonderful opportunity for us to be involved even more closely with Salford Rugby Club and its fans at this exciting time in the club’s development.  The new website looks fantastic and we are delighted to be the 2009 sponsor.”

Austin Wilkinson & Sons Ltd is a member of Palletline plc, an association of 70 UK hauliers working together providing nationwide delivery services for palletised goods.  With a mind for the future and ongoing development of this “share user” service,  Palletline plc have recently moved to a purposely larger new central hub situated near to the NEC having overgrown their capacity by year on year growth from their previous Erdington, Birmingham Hub.

“We have now the capacity in our night time sortation to handle more 12,000 pallets comfortably” and distribute them the very next to the  recipients”  said James Wilkinson,

Palletline plc:  “The people driving palletised distribution “.

Reds’ Stars Irish Agony as Tonga Snatch Win

Karl Fitzpatrick and Stuart Littler suffered World Cup anony as the Wolfhounds went down by the slimmest of margins in their opening fixture.

Ireland produced a courageous display in going down to an agonising defeat by Tonga in an epic World Cup Pool 3 game on a sweltering evening at Parramatta Stadium.

The lead changed hands six times before the appropriately named Esikeli Tonga pounced for the match-deciding try seven minutes from the end of a thrill-a-minute encounter which was lapped up the colourful 6,165 crowd.

The outcome was tough on the brave Irish and especially winger Damien Blanch, whose hat-trick of tries was all in vain.

Ireland coach Andy Kelly had complained that his side had not been given the respect they deserved in the build-up to their opening game but they left to a standing ovation after playing their part on a match that will live long in the memory.

Ireland stood up to a ferocious onslaught by the bigger Tongan forwards and showed they can play football by matching their star-studded opponents try for try.

In the end, it came down to goalkicking, with Pat Richards landing just two of his four conversion attempts on the ground where he made his NRL debut.

For a long time it looked as though Tonga would pay the price for their indiscipline, with Ireland scoring 14 of their points while the islanders were down to 12 men.

English referee Steve Ganson awarded 10 first-half penalties to Ireland and, after losing his patience, sent winger Tonga to the sin bin on 23 minutes for laying on in the tackle.

Ireland scored two tries while Tonga was on the sidelines and they added another after stand-off Feleti Mateo was also shown a yellow card on 48 minutes for dissent.

The islanders must have thought it was not going to be their day. They were earlier denied the services of NRL stars Fuifui Moimoi and Taniela Tuiaki and were forced into a late change when Castleford captain Awen Guttenbeil withdrew with a knee injury.

But they lead 6-0 thanks to a 10th-minute try from 20-year-old Penrith centre Michael Jennings and could have been further ahead after dominating the opening quarter.

Centre Etuate Uaisele dropped the ball with the line at his mercy and they had another effort disallowed by video referee Paul Simpkins.

But Ireland recovered from a sluggish start and took advantage of the temporary absence of winger Tonga to work an overlap on 25 minutes, captain Scott Grix sending Blanch over at the corner.

That gave Kelly’s men just the encouragement they needed and they produced their best rugby of the match to carve out a splendid try for full-back Michael Platt, who finished off a break by scrum-half Karl Fitzpatrick.

Richards, returning to his home-town club Parramatta, added the conversion to put Ireland 10-6 ahead and they should have extended the lead when Richards helped create another overlap but centre Sean Gleeson’s pass to an unmarked Blanch went into touch.

Platt then turned from hero to villain when he hesitated at clearing a speculative kick from scrum-half Joel Taufa’ao and winger Cooper Vuna pounced for a soft try that levelled the scores.

Taufa’ao missed the conversion but kicked a penalty on the stroke of half-time to edge his side back in front.

Richards then went agonisingly close to touching down Fitzpatrick’s high kick early in the second half before Tonga once more gave their opponents a helping hand with Mateo’s sin-binning.

A superb pass out of the tackle by Gleeson got Blanch over for his second try but Tonga looked to have secured the victory when they kept the ball alive superbly on the last tackle and Uaisele scored the try of the match.

With Taufa’ao off the pitch, substitute Tony Williams added the conversion to make it 18-14 but the drama continued when Jennings had a try disallowed and Blanch gathered Brendan Finn’s kick to complete his hat-trick.

Richards’ touchline conversion edged the Irish back in front but their hearts were broken when Mateo forced a 40-20 kick and made the telling pass for Tonga to score the all-important try.

Tonga: Talanoa, Vuna, Jennings, Uaisele, Tonga, Mateo, Taufa’ao, Kaufusi, Leo-Latau, Manuokafoa, L. Paea, Fa’aoso, Manu.
Replacements: Moa, Lauaki, Uasi, Williams.

Ireland: Platt, Blanch, Gleeson, Littler, Richards, Grix, Fitzpatrick, O’Carroll, Beswick, Tandy, Harrison, Doran, Finnigan.
Replacements: McIlorum, Finn, Haggerty, Cassidy.

Referee: S Ganson (England)

Wilshere’s Kumuls Give England World Cup Scare

England battled back from a 16-12 half-time deficit to beat Papua New Guinea 32-22 as the World Cup got off to a thrilling start in Townsville.

Inspired by the evergreen Stanley Gene, the Kumuls had the better of the opening period and looked set to cause a huge upset after tries from Rod Griffin, Jason Chan and George Kepa.

But with PNG tiring after the interval, England finally found some composure and claimed the win with a hat-trick from Lee Smith and further tries for Martin Gleeson and Ade Gardner.

It was a less than impressive display from an England side expected to go all the way to the final in Brisbane.

England coach Tony Smith insisted he was never worried about the result despite the half-time deficit.

He said: “I wasn’t concerned but there were some issues we needed to take care of. Once we did that I knew we would score some points.

“It will probably do us a world of good rather than a soft game – though we knew it wouldn’t be a soft game.

“They had plenty of ball, give them the ball they are going to rattle you up a bit and they did that for a while.

“We put a bit of pressure on ourselves not having enough composure in the first half.

“There are some lessons learned. They’ll be better for the run, they showed character to come up with the win even if they didn’t play particularly well.”

Papua New Guinea coach Adrian Lam felt the decisions didn’t go his side’s way.

The Kumuls were disallowed a try for a forward pass when they were 16-12 up which would have given England a real mountain to climb.

Lam said: “That was devastating, it would have put us 10 points ahead if we had got the conversion as well.

“That was a real hurt but we hung in there.

“A couple more decisions going our way and it’s game on. I thought their defence was a lot better in the second half.

“I thought we could have got a few more penalties for offside.

“I’m really proud of them, we’ve come from a long way to where we are tonight.

“We wanted a win and had a couple of bounces, or referee’s decisions gone our way it could have been that.”

Leuluai And Paul Steal Heroes of Sport Show

Day One of the BT Heroes of Sport Exhibition firmly belonged to Reds’ stars Phil Leuluai and Robbie Paul as the Salford City Reds continue to spread their message around the region ahead of their return to Super League in 2009.

The first of the three day spectacular at Manchester Central (formerly GMEX) saw the lads mobbed by autograph hunters and schoolchildren and followed a highly successful appearance at The Trafford Centre last night when the mall switched on its Christmas Lights.

Big Phil even got his chance to try his hand at Lacrosse for the first time with some of the England team based on the next stand to the Reds C3 base.

There was even time to meet Manchester City legend Tony Book for a quick photo-shoot ahead of his signing session.

Heroes of Sport is on at Manchester Central until Sunday, admission priced at £12.

Here are the best images of the day. Click to zoom.

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