For those who dont know, Swinton Lions are faced with a winding up order with the court case scheduled for January 2014. Whilst the HMRC order is only £17k, their overall debt is said to be close to £100k. Marwan Koukash has expressed a strong interest in taking over the ownership of Swinton Lions, but he will only do so if Salford City Council give their full support to a new stadium within Swinton town centre which would include restaurants and other revenue raisers for the club. Whilst I believe Swinton fans are also looking at the option of a supporters based ownership, Dr Koukash is their only real hope of a bright future. I would therefore ask and encourage you to sign the below petition in support of the proposed new stadium development for Swinton Lions IN Swinton. https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/ ... nton#share Many thanks and who knows, the opening game of the 2015 Super League season may be a derby between Salford and Swinton infront of a sell out crowd.

For those who dont know, Swinton Lions are faced with a winding up order with the court case scheduled for January 2014. Whilst the HMRC order is only £17k, their overall debt is said to be close to £100k. Marwan Koukash has expressed a strong interest in taking over the ownership of Swinton Lions, but he will only do so if Salford City Council give their full support to a new stadium within Swinton town centre which would include restaurants and other revenue raisers for the club. Whilst I believe Swinton fans are also looking at the option of a supporters based ownership, Dr Koukash is their only real hope of a bright future. I would therefore ask and encourage you to sign the below petition in support of the proposed new stadium development for Swinton Lions IN Swinton. https://www.change.org/en-GB/petitions/ ... nton#share Many thanks and who knows, the opening game of the 2015 Super League season may be a derby between Salford and Swinton infront of a sell out crowd.

I hope everyone signs up for this and gets the message to other people to do the same. The new ground would be in the heart of Swinton and would bring RL back to the town.

It would be good to see Swinton move back to Swinton. But would the RFL allow MK to own two clubs in the same city?

It's a tricky one but I couldn't see a monopoly or a case of conflict of interest unless he started dual registering first team players in order to boost Swinton's championship chances, in which case he would rightly be stopped from carrying out such a process.

I would say if the teams were in the same division it would also become an issue.

Having discussed this very matter with Marwan Koukash, it seemed the likely scenario would be that his wife (Mandy) would be named as the Swinton Lions chairman as opposed to Marwan himself.

Every credit to those die hard Swinton fans, salt of the earth. But looking at the situation rationally Swinton as a professional club should have died along with Station Road in 1992.

It's not Super League so therefore it cannot be important

Good luck to the Pigtowners. Can't hurt to have a second strong team in the area, especially after what they did for us last year.

Where do the current/previous owners stand in all this ? There has been little coming out of the club for months.

A great shame for a one-time powerhouse club that was the third and last to win All Four Cups and were back to back First Division champions in '63' and '64.

As I understand it John Kidd (chairman) has stepped down and basically left his son Paul Kidd to pick up the pieces. They're in a mess financially with over £120k owed, fingers crossed Marwan Koukash gets involved.

Signed

I thought Koukash was buying into Oldham? Is he just buying into every Greater Manchester club?!

The Oldham deal fell through when the chairman of the football club (Simon Corney) refused to sell because Koukash wanted to build a new stadium to house both the football and rugby club. Since then, the situation at Swinton has raised it's head and he wishes to now help them and rugby league as a whole in the City of Salford.

Over 500 signatures, great effort. If you haven't signed it yet please do.

The petition would have a lot more clout if the majority of signatories were from the Swinton catchment area rather than the general RL public who may be sympathetic but are unlikely to trouble the turnstile operator.

The majority of the signatures are from the Swinton/Salford area, however support from further afield can only assist and help the Council understand there is a genuine support to see Swinton Lions succeed.

Id like to thank each and every person for their signature. I'll be honest its not easy being a swinton fan. We have been through more than most. I was gearing up to watch another team this season as i thought we were gone. However, this has given us a slight glimmer of hope.

Please could each and every one of you urge all your RL friends to sign up. After all we are only 3 years away from our 150th birthday!

Thanks

Barnie!

Done keep it up

Not sure that's his prime motive when it appears he has added the rather large condition that he will only get involved if allowed to build some retail/leisure/restaurant outlets alongside.

That's because Koukash as the successful businessman that he is, knows Swinton Lions will never become a sustainable club without their own ground in Swinton which can make them money through the associated revenue streams mentioned such as restaurants etc.

If Marwan wanted to make a quick buck, do you think he'd get involved? The answer is no, he'd probably just got and buy a few more horses. He wants to see Swinton succeed and he wants to see RL in Salford prosper.

I have a lot of time and respect for Swinton supporters. I remember back in January speaking to a few blokes in the LSV Legends Bar prior to the whiteout pre-season game and they were a top bunch. To travel over to Leigh in conditions like that for a friendly takes real dedication. I couldn't get back to Warrington that night so people must have had some nightmare journeys.

All the best, I hope things will start to look up soon.

Done
All the best next season and beyond

I signed the petition but was wondering where this guy's money derives / derived from?

Well if he thinks so much about RL and doesn't care for a quick buck, maybe he can pay Salfords large debt to the LSV stadium and while he's at it he can pay Swintons large debt to the LSV stadium seeing as he cares so much about Swinton

You really have got a bee in your bonnet regarding the debt both Salford and Swinton have racked up with LSV havent you? Just to calm you down a little, our (Salford) CVA was approved back in February this year which stated all previous creditors will receive any outstanding monies. So, to answer your question yes he can afford to pay Salford's debt and is doing so on a monthly basis.

I trust a similar scenario will unfold if/when he takes over Swinton.

Now take your bitter little self back over to the Leigh board and continue to defend the LSV for allowing two clubs to rack up a reasonable amount of debt within the space of 12 months of each other. It seems they havent learnt anything from the Salford situation. Give them some tips though, one months missed payment issue a warning letter, two months missed payment issue them with a notice informing the party they are in breach of contract and unless they make payment within 30 days they will no longer have use of the facilities. Alternatively, allow clubs to rack up thousand and thousands of pounds debt then complain when they're faced with administration.

The LSV needs tenants to pay the bills, a lot of which are fixed, so hence need to be flexible. However, there was never a hope that Swinton could afford to pay the bills from Day 1, with the fan base they have. At least the LSV are not looking for anyone else to bail them out of this mess, unlike Swinton. Don't get me wrong, I hope they survive and thrive but they need to cut their cloth. If that involves playing on a local park then so be it.