The University of Salford’s American Football team, Salford Storm, are hoping they can touchdown in the BUCS league next year.
League entry will allow the side to compete against other universities across the country in the prestigious BUCS competition, the highest level of competition in university sports.
The team’s vice-chairman, Jake Moore, is excited at the prospect of the team competing and feels Salford will be able to keep up with the best.
“We’ve got a really good team who all want to play and compete every week,” he said.
“We’ve been training for two years now and we’ve had the same core group of guys stick with us through that time.
“They’ve all gotten better at training and as a team, we definitely have the ability to compete in the league and take on some of the best teams, especially in the lower division we’d be starting in”.
The BUCS league is divided up into 3 divisions, with the Premier division being the highest, before it works its way down through Division 1 and Division 2.
Each division is then divided up into regional leagues, where the top teams progress through to the playoffs at the end of the regular season.
As of the 2019/20 season, there are a total of 81 teams competing in the BUCS competition, with Salford hoping to be the 82nd.
Although it’s now looking up for Salford Storm, they had gone through a year and a half of training without any equipment until this year, when they managed to secure the funding to purchase shoulder pads and helmets.
“It’s a really expensive sport to set up and it does take quite a bit of time and money to do that,” Jake said.
“We’ve managed to get shoulder pads and helmets, but there’s still so much more we need.
“Then there’s training equipment and the stuff we need for matches, all of which we still need to buy.
“Even in training, we don’t have tackle bags yet, we’re having to use each other and once we’re competing, that’s not ideal”.
With the total cost of setting up the team currently set at over £5,500, Salford’s inroads into this number seems minuscule, however the team are still confident they are closer than the numbers suggest.
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Team treasurer Andy Goodfellow said: “It’s been a rocky journey over the last couple of years, but we’re now on the right track and it’s looking really positive.
“It does cost a lot of money, and we’ve barely dented that total, but no-one’s worried about it.
“We’ve not really got a plan in place to be completely honest, but we know where we want to be and what we’ve got to do to get there”.
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