Salford City Reds and Greater Manchester Police have teamed up to offer children additional opportunities to play sports in the Winton area.

From Wednesday 9th April young people will be able to take part in a number of multisport activities at Winton Park on a weekly basis. The activities will provide children with the opportunity to play games, improve skills, make new friends and generally have fun. Not only will children get the chance to experience rugby coaching from the Reds community development team, but they can also take part in a number of other team games such as football, cricket and basketball.

Police Sergeant John Rowson said “As part of the Salford divisions drive to reduce anti social behaviour we are looking not only at enforcement but also to promote activities which divert young people into more positive ways of spending their time. The partnership with Salford City Reds is an exciting way of showing young people what they can achieve by using their time constructively and becoming involved in sports.”

The activities, which begin on 9^th April will run every Wednesday from 4 – 5.30pm and are open to boys and girls from age 7 to 16. Seb Rowe, Community Rugby League Development Officer at Salford City Reds said “Now that the days are getting longer it is a great opportunity for children to get back outside and involved in sporting activities. The sessions start at 4pm and are finished by 5.30 which means children can come after school and still get home in time for tea!”

For more information contact PCSO Nigel Kirk on 0161 856 5317 or Seb Rowe on 0161 737 5515

Salford City Reds have delivered their application for a 2009 Super League Licence to the RFL in Leeds on Monday afternoon.

Angela Powers and Sky Sports were there and if you want to see the Reds’ bid arrive, check out Boots n All on Wednesday.

Well, that’s it. Dave Tarry has just set off to deliver our Licence Application to RFL Headquarters in Leeds. Deadline is 5pm, so hopefully he won’t meet any horrendous traffic or get a flat tyre or something!

Here are some Licence Facts for you:

We have to supply six printed copies and a single electronic version to the RFL.

Our Application consists of seven separate documents. These are:

1) The actual application document (part of which you have seen on Sky Sports, but there is a lot more to it than those 10 points!). This is basically an actual application form, which has been filled in and signed by the Reds Directors to state that we are applying and that the information contained within is true.

2) A Marketing Strategy document - this details all aspects of how the Reds are marketed, both now and when we move, and includes in-depth business plans from the Marketing, Media, Ticketing, Community and Commercial departments detailing, amongst other things, how we intend to continue increasing our attendances over the next three years. It also includes independent market research on both the new stadium (with, and again I stress the word independent, research that backs up what David Tarry said about our attendances when we go to the new stadium in 2010 - no, he hasn’t just plucked that figure out of thin air!) as well as a customer service report.

3 & 4) Finance & Business Management details - This comes in two parts.
Part one deals with the RFL’s financial assessment criteria (again, similar lines to what Boots N All have been covering, but as far as I know this section hasn’t been made public). Things the RFL want to know include answers and explanations to all their questions, financial accounts back to 2005 to demonstrate a solid financial history and a three year, forward looking business plan (again, independently verified by one of the biggest accountancy firms in the country) that covers budgets, projections and other accounting stuff that you would really need to ask Financial Director Paul Snape about to understand! Part 2 of this section is an appendix, dealing with the RFL’s request for evidence relating to the answers given in part 1. It contains examples of contracts to prove compliance with RFL regulations, ground safety information, even the lease for our remaining years at The Willows. It also provides details of the policies the club follows in terms of things like equal opportunities, child welfare, HR Development and various other things.

5) Playing Strengths - Again, there were a slew of criteria in this section that haven’t been made as high profile as the ones you all know about, but are just as, if not more important. There is information about the first team squad in there, but the focus is definitely on Player Development, and the club are very lucky to have someone as capable as Alan Hunte in charge of this for us as our Player Performance Manager. The document includes detailed answers to the RFL’s questions on all the playing squads, and provides examples of the philosophy of the department, including evidence of lectures on subjects such as nutrition, behaviour, rehab and strength & conditioning.

6) Current Facilities - As we will still be at The Willows for the first year of the Licence term we have provided two facilities documents. The first details The Willows and covers whether or not it meets the Super League minimum standards (which it actually does in almost all areas).
Again, there are criteria laid down by the RFL, and this document deals with those as well as issues such as safety certificates, structural surveys and other stuff like that. It also covers our agreements with the training facility providers (Sedgley Park for the first team, Parrenthorn for the Academy and Phillips High for the Scholarship) along with details of the facilities provided and supporting photographic evidence.

7) The City of Salford Stadium - This document was the only one not produced in-house (showing the strength of the back room staff at the Reds - not all clubs had the capability to produce their own application and had to outsource) and was produced by Red City Developments and Project Managers Drivers Jonas. It includes an overview of the project from Red City, a current status update from Drivers Jonas, the very latest (and almost final) detailed plans dated 25/3/2008 and the latest Project Schedule showing all aspects of the development and showing whether they are running ahead or behind (currently all green for on time!). Also included in the Appendix of this document are details on the companies who are now on-board to actually deliver the development. It is a very impressive list of collaborators who, between them, seem to have worked on just about every major development in the last ten years!

And that’s it. Apart from a very smart looking CD containing the electronic version so even if David has amishap and it all goes spilling across the M62 if his boot flies open we’re still covered!

In total, one single copy of the Salford City Reds 2009 Super League Licence Application totals 1566 pages (spread pretty evenly throughout the seven documents - we haven’t just submitted 1450 pages of the planning enquiry stuff! In fact, that isn’t included at all!).

Multiply that by six copies and we are actually submitting 9396 pages to the RFL today - all relevant to what they asked us to provide, no waffle and no wastage.

Work began four months ago and the final touches were put in on Saturday morning. The Directors signed the application at Batley yesterday.

It’s exciting today, but we need to remember it could be three months before we hear anything else about this now! All we can say is that the application is hugely comprehensive, and really is the club laid bare for the RFL to judge.

PS - We did consider a horribly inappropriate April Fool’s joke for tomorrow morning, whereby we posted that David had been delayed, hadn’t arrived until 5.05pm and therefore our application had been rejected, but Robin reckoned that a) it would be too cruel, and b) I would probably get strung up at the next Forever Red’s meeting, so we won’t be doing that!
Someone will update later when he’s actually arrived and lodged the application!

Here we go folks

Reds community development officers will be taking the long trip north in to Scotland tomorrow as part of our committment to developing the game at grass roots. The Reds have had a link with Monkland Warriors ARLFC for a number of years, with the Airdrie based team travelling down to the Willows on a number of occasions.

 As part of their committment to the Reds (travelling hundreds of miles for matches at the Willows) this weekend will see the club deliver coaching & skills sessions to local youngsters, who are both new and experienced with regards to rugby league. The club is headed up by Reds fan Les Obre who works behind the scenes at the club against all odds.

Have we all recovered from the Easter weekend’s exploits? I think I’ve just about sorted myself out.What about the rugby eh? What can I say about Thursday night? Well I’ll start with the conditions, dreadful springs to mind (I’m keeping it clean), I don’t recall the last time I’ve been anywhere (not only rugby related) when I’ve seen so much rain, at one point I was sure I spotted Noah travelling in his much reputed ark past Asda down the Atherleigh Way. Then throw the gale force winds and we had a recipe for disaster. In fairness to both sides, the performances in those conditions we’re pretty good. Yes you’d get handling errors, when don’t you? And sure it wouldn’t make for an open expansive game, as I’m sure our lads would prefer, but overall the quality was decent enough. The lads really soaked up the Leigh attack in the first half when we had the worst of the nights weather in our faces (The players that is) and going in 2 – 2 at half time, I’m sure Shaun and the boys were more than happy with that. In the 2^nd half it was our turn to use the conditions and we did it excellently, Myler and Ratchford’s kicking kept Leigh pretty much on the back foot and gave our forwards such as Stapleton, Nash, Leuluai etc a great platform to take the game.

Salford City Reds in partnership with the RFL are hosting some taster rugby sessions at Parrenthorn Sports Centre, Prestwich. The sessions aimed at 10 to 14 year olds will take place on Thursday 27th and Friday 28th March, 10-12 noon. Salford City Reds development officers will be on hand to teach children new skills and play fun games.

Participation is free, and you can even win some prizes just for taking part. The sessions will take place on astro turf , so trainers and tracksuit are all children need. Parrenthorn Sports Centre (Parrenthorn High School) is located on Heywood Road, Prestwich, M33 2AA

Should you wish to find out more information about these activities you can contact Seb Rowe on 07921 078 103. If you want to learn more about Rugby League Development in Bury and Bolton you can contact Alan Kilshaw on 07874308426.

Date for your diary. The next round of the Northern Rail Cup v Bramley Buffaloes will be played on Friday 4 April, Kick off 8pm.

Admission prices to follow.