My. Every game is a cup final’
more than a pay cheque. “The ambition of the club is just so infectious. This is a very positive club to be around. Everyone’s so enthusiastic. And, just like players can sense when a club’s going in the wrong direction, so they buzz off the energy when it’s going forward like this club is. There’s never a dull moment.”
Rooney was only too aware, as he scored 21 goals in Salford’s promotion push last season, that the club raise as many hackles as they secure points.
“A lot of people seemed to be against us,” he says. “When we lost a game they revelled in it. When it looked as though we might not be promoted there seemed to be a lot of happy people out there, particularly on social media – God they hate us on there. So when we made it [via the play-off at Wembley], we were glad to upset a few of them. I think it will be the same this year, people trying to knock us down a peg and we’ll just have to deal with it.”
His manager, though, insists that he finds little stimulation in the urge to prove people wrong. “I don’t go for that, I’d rather prove people right,” says Alexander. “The people who’ve backed me: I’d rather do it for them. A lot of faith was put in us by the owners and I want to repay that.” Though he does confess that the reaction to the club changed his approach when he first arrived in Salford from managing Scunthorpe.
“Wherever we go we’re the archenemy. It opened my eyes. I realised pretty quickly we had to focus on getting more out of ourselves. We had to go into every game like it’s a cup final, because it tended to be a cup final for the other team. I thought the lads did that brilliantly last season.”
And Rooney wonders why the dislike is so universal. “To see ex-football people getting stick for reinvesting in a football club is a strange one. Personally, I think it is brilliant that they have put their money back into the game.”
Meanwhile, whatever the outside world thinks, Gaskill has ambitions of her own for the new stadium. “The one thing I’d like to see here is to name something after the old chairman, Harold Brearley. He was here on his own, with his dog, from day one. For years he kept this place alive. I’d love a stand or something to be named after him. Eventually they’ve got to do it. It’s only right. I’m going to have a word with Gary [Neville] about it.”