Salford RLFC’s first game of the Championship season will be a celebration of survival, says new owner Mason Caton-Brown.
After months and months of financial uncertainty, the Red Devils were officially liquidated earlier this month, with the club, who were relegated from Super League in 2025, unable to stay afloat.
However, Caton-Brown and his consortium have been selected by the RFL to lead a phoenix Salford outfit into a new era, with their bid winning out over interest from Tracy Atiga and Chris Irwin.
They don’t have long before the action gets underway either with the new Salford club set to host Oldham on the opening day of the Championship season on January 16.
As such over the next three weeks, Salford will have to find a head coach and a squad of players in order to fulfil the fixture. However, above all, Caton-Brown is keen to be transparent re-establish the links the club have to the community and the consortium will be hosting a fans’ forum in the build up to the first clash at the Salford Community Stadium.
“A fans’ forum will be held before the first game, we’re inviting everyone down, as many people as we can, at the stadium,” Caton-Brown told Serious About RL. “We just want to communicate, answer questions and also just bring the fan base together again.
“We just want to bring everyone together again leading into January 16 and that game will just be a massive celebration for all the fans in the city for surviving really.”
On taking on the phoenix club, he added: “It feels amazing, I think I speak for the rest of the group as well, it’s just a massive achievement for all the work we’ve put in over the last few weeks.
“We put a lot into our bid and plans and thankfully the RFL saw that and saw that we could build this club sustainably and effectively. It’s a massive relief as well. There was a lot of pressure in the build up to this but we’re just happy to be given the green light and now we can execute on that plan.
“The RFL needed to make sure that whoever they were picking was the right fit and that delay had to come. I’m just relieved and excited for January 16, our first game.”
What the Salford club will be called come January 16 remains to be seen, though, with Caton-Brown teasing the Reds could be set for a new moniker.
“We’re keeping Salford at the heart of the name but we’ll confirm the name probably once we do it our way,” he said when asked whether they plan to keep the Red Devils nickname. “We don’t want to just shout something out but we’ll definitely be keeping Salford as the name.”
Of course promotion back to Super League feels a long way away at present, with the new club yet to fully get off the ground ahead of their first season in the Championship.
However, Caton-Brown will not hide away from his long-term desire to take the club back to the big time.
“The long term goal is to be back in the top flight of rugby,” he added. “Right now the goal is stability and security of the club and making sure we can compete throughout the year.”
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