You can never really be sure when summer begins in old blighty, nor when it ends...because we rarely notice it starting, and when we realised it had, it was over before it’d begun! Although, the shortage of fans and air conditioners in Argos, a burnt ‘t-zone’ and the remergence of the word ‘muggy’ is a fair giveaway.

In Salford, however, the signs are easier to spot. Someone always has a soft top Ford Escort, and you only ever see it at the start of summer. Even though Ford stopped making them years ago. And at the mere hint of a prolonged stint of sun, that top comes down no matter what. There could be a black cloud on the horizon, a guaranteed monsoon up ahead, a motorway needing to be traversed—forget it, that top is coming down. Another sign used to be corned beef legs. More of a rarity in the era of the tanning salon but if…

Continue reading ‘Summertime is here!’

How on earth am I going to live this down? This weeks tipster of the week goes to *Lady In Red* with 59 whilst I came 2nd last with 41! In joint 2nd place came our youngest competitor Jack The Red with 56 and TOMMO2, Salford red all over came in next with 54. If I’m honest there wasn’t much between top and bottom this week…yeah OK I’m trying to make myself feel better!

Continue reading ‘Round 6 - League Results’

The disgruntled voices we mentioned about briefly a few weeks back are getting stronger. Having to perform a late, late show at Sheffield to snatch a draw didn’t go down well with the Salford faithful—many of whom thought the Reds deserved to lose. So...what exactly is the problem? Is it that we don’t have enough quality players? Did we underestimate the relative strength of the other clubs in NL1? Or are the Reds just simply out of form? Mind you: Salford are still top of the league, and unbeaten too. Aren’t we just lobbing our dummies across the terrace?

In trying to pinpoint exactly why we’re a bunch of unhappy campers, let’s look at some statistics. Salford have played six league games so far and are currently a third-way through the NL1 regular season. In comparing the 2008 Reds with recently prominent National League clubs, at the same stage of their respective seasons, perhaps we can…

Continue reading ‘2003 vs. 2008 II’

Most spors commentators wrote off Dwain Chambers’ attempt to forge playing career in Rugby League as a publicity stunt. Plenty of RL pundits balked at the mere suggestion of any serious intent; some even went as far as to say it shouldn’t be allowed to happen, making a mockery of the game. (No prizes for guessing who those names were!) However, you could argue that all of them have since eaten varying amounts of humble pie. The one commentator who actually talked some sense during the hubbub was (for once) ‘Stevo’.

In his column for Rugby Leaguer & League Express, ‘Stevo’ had wrote earlier about how the game only gets decent media coverage when it reports on adverse or bad news. This was in direct response to the Jared Hayne ‘shooting’, and to a lesser extent Tim Smith’s battle with alcohol dependancy and bipolar disorder, and Andrew Johns’s 12-year battle with…

Continue reading ‘E.T’s own bone’

It’s almost 100 years since the Australian national rugby league team first came to The Willows to face Salford. Since then, the two teams have met on 11 seperate occasions, culminating in many historic and memorable moments, and playing host to some of the greatest RL players the game has ever seen. This is the story of when Harry Dally when met Sally Solly.

The embryonic tours

The first ever meeting between the two took place during Australia’s first ever tour to blighty. On 17 October 1908, the Kangaroos arrived at The Willows for the fifth game of their mammoth 46-match tour schedule. 6100 intrigued punters paid one shilling for the privilege, if only to catch aglimpse of seeing a real live kangaroo in the flesh. No really, the Australian mascot was a living, breathing, kangaroo. No men in plastic suits or furry costumes back then! Another rare delight for the local crowd was, of course. the…

Continue reading ‘Salford vs. Australia’