have you any evidence of them happening?

To be honest, I think he was defending Widnes as a club. SOME of the overspending was done before Stephen Vaughan took over, but the tax bill for £500,000 pushed us over the edge. A tax bill of 500,000 as a result of a carousel fraud is hardly an indicator as to wether Widnes as a club are a financial viable rugby club.

Fairly obvious that Widnes' major financial problems started when we were relegated. Now considering the absolute panic and fear by some SL club fans saying they want to sue the RFL if they are omitted next time round saying how no licence is a restriction of trade and they will go bust etc, is it that surprising that Widnes struggled to adjust to life outside SL.

Widnes are an easy target when talking about financial history, but a lot of people forget about who was in charge when we went into adminstration. When people talk about Celtic and Leighton Samuels, the general opinion seems to be it was all his fault and no wonder they fell into trouble. We had an absolute crook running us and yet most people forget that and can only see Widnes = financial trouble. We were well and truely shafted by the last owner, yet a lot of fans say it was our own fault. Widnes only fault was selling to Stephen Vaughan in the first place. When the true picture of Widnes finances emerged, who in their right mind would have come in and cleared the debts thus avoiding adminstration? If Steve O'Connor would have come in 12-18 months earlier, Widnes financial worries would not have arisen.

Link ,link,link,link,link,link,

If you really think i'm going to spend my time looking for them , no , so I'll tell you what , you give us some evidence that all those things didn't happen , it's been a balls up from day one , we all told you they weren't ready , and we were right , yes you are correct , it wasn't RL money that has been wasted , or was it , all those players were being paid for Community work by the RFL , now maybe they did it maybe they didn't , so away you go find the ' evidence ' they did ?

And the opposite is equally true.

1)news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/rugby_league/super_league/celtic_crusaders/8207827.stm

2)www.slstats.org/t45/Crusaders+Rugby+League/2010/Summary.html

3)www.skysports.com/story/0,19528,15612_6482320,00.html

Best thing is to accept, correct and move on denial will only take anyone backwards!

you want me to prove to you something didnt happen. You do realise it would be impossible to prove something didnt happen dont you?

regardless of the validity of this assertion (which is different from the incorrect assertions TonyGee made) you think that considering the huge uplift in participation and visibility of the game within wales, that the RFLs community work has been as waste of their money? interesting

thanks for proving me correct,

there have been many lower attendances.

and again, thanks

indeed,

It will be if it ends up failing yes

so getting kids playing RL in Wales has been a failure because the Crusaders are in financial difficulties,

shall we pull the community coaches out of Wakefield? Dont want the RFL wasting their money do we?

That would be silly , what would Leeds do for juniors ?

use the ones we have in Leeds like usual.

Do you think RL in Wales has a positive image in the media? The last three years have been a complete farce from start to finish. Visibility of the game in Wales? Are you taking the pizz? Fook me Goebbels.

its better than the three years previous.

It bloody well isn't.

Ok, they broke the law to get into SL. They wouldn't have got out of Champ 1 into the Championship without their illegals

I would agree with a lot of what Wellsy and Roy said in his last post but I would say that the RFL, despite a lot of problems including annoying things like not keeping a better check on Crusaders, are better than they used to be in a lot of areas. As for the licensing criteria, I might be mistaken on this but I thought that the SL clubs all agreed on the licensing criteria and it wasnt necessarily a simple, straight RFL decision.

I would also disagree on the assertion that the grassroots and amateur game is doing brilliantly. It is in some areas, notably the newer areas like Wales and London but back in the heartlands generally the amateur is a disgraceful part of our sport that is partly to blame for the lack of quality players in SL.

exactly working in britain without a work permit is regarded as being illegal.............hence illegal immigrants.

i feel sorry for the crusaders and their fans, it was a fanatastic shot in the arm for the game when they were formed and ok samuels wasn't the ideal person to take them forward they were progressing quite steadily. i blame the rfl for the current plight of crusaders for their indecent haste to get them into super league with basically a championship 1 set up. now they are in administration because of the folly.....

They were in the country legally, they just didn't have the right to work.

That doesn't make them illegal immigrants. It makes them immigrants who were working illegally.

Thanks for clearing that up for the flat earth brigade Gazemous.

No problem then , you won promotion with a load of ilegal RL players , does that make it sound any better ?

FFS Does it matter cru. They were employed illegally then. The result was the same. Funny really in the country legally and they get deported, many in the country illegally don't get deported. Either way Samuels was approached by the RFL to back a South Wales team with a cast iron promise for SL in three years, he got it, took the SL money, spent very little on the team, money has gone missing from pension funds (or not even reached them) and he made a few quid.

In short he only backed the team because he was asked and given promises by the RFL

Lads, let it be. We've dealt with it and moved on. Why can't you lot.

I am now looking to the future and think it can be bright on and off the field. If you'd prefer to look at the past and be bitter about things that were out of your control then so be it.

Question?

If the second year as been a success, and the administration is due to past debts etc etc. Why are the current owners trying to sell it?