Survival is not a god given right for any club.....if they fold, they should be left to fold......there are others who would welcome the chance to step up to the top table.

Bradfords "stay of execution" last year overshaddowed the entire season...it was farcical. Salford should have until January 7th to declare themselves able to fulfill their 27 SL fixtures......if they can't, then cancelling Magic weekend and creating a bye weekend, or inviting Halifax in on a 2 year licence are 2 options that could be considered.......but if the RFL bail out another club, then the game will start to unravel with sugar daddies asking "why they should waste their hard earned cash" if badly run clubs get free hand-outs.

If Salford did fold then the solution for the Magic weekend would be to 'invite' a Championship club (probably Fev) to fill the gap - I would imagine that the Sky contract would preclude cancelling the event. SL would almost certainly have to run with 13 clubs as there simply isn't time for Halifax/Leigh to assemble a competitive team in time for the start of the season.

The only bit i disagree with you on is halifax or any champ club being invited to join sl at such short notice.

Who knows what the right thing to do with magic weekend would be,no doubt any decision taken would be the wrong one in some peoples eyes,personally i would just give widnes a bye and two points and be done with it.

Yes that is what I am saying, the sport is at a crossroad at this moment, if it takes the wrong turn it could be damaged beyond repair IMO

Can you expand on this idea?

The rfl dont have the money (what would it be £2.5million? over the two seasons to bankroll salford,they would never get it back,who knows it could even bankrupt them.
Now if the sl club chairmen want to fork that kind of money out,then fine get on with it.

Why would the club need to be bankrolled over the next two seasons? According to John Wilkinson, they have a 'robust' business plan that could even see them make a profit next year, since it's based on a much reduced expected income. The problem is that they expected attendances of around 8000 last season, and based their expenditure on this estimate. As we know, those attendances didn't materialise and they ran up a debt of £600,000. This needs to be cleared before the start of the season. That, as far as we know, is the major problem, so I'm not sure why you think the RFL would need to bankroll them.

This thread is a certain section of RL fans distilled in to their purest form

If in doubt, Guess or make something up, cry favouritism and above all blame the RFL

Its strange that you would believe anything john wilkinson tells you now

The club have produced a business plan and, as part of the due diligence process undertaken by the City of Salford and Peel Holdings, that business plan was verified by two accounting firms: KPMG and one other that I can't remember the name of.

To help me decide who to believe, can you tell me what your assertion that the club will need to be funded by the RFL is based on and how it has been verified?

Thanks in advance.

I said the rfl shouldn't fund you it was another poster who said they should

You suggested that if the RFL were to support Salford, they would need to bankroll the club for two seasons.
Red John was saying that a business plan is in place, audited by KPMG and Peel's accountants, which foresees a profit based on significantly reduced expenditure.
Any RFL funding would be to get over the present crisis.

We're getting a bit closer to what actually said now aren't we.

I was responding to a poster who said the rfl should definately bail salford out now and for the next two season i said they shouldn't and gave my reasons why.

Go back to the other poster and ask him why he thinks salford [ushould[/u be bailed out for the next two years.

If i remember rightly the club announcement said 'firms like kpmg'. The business plan was based on 1.5 million pounds of loans not an investors cash. This is being strung out as long as JW can do to try and force the RFLs hand. The club is now subject to a second winding up petition brought by Luke Patten. This was reported in Business Week on Friday. There are no investors and if there were they will not be taking on your debts.

Er, I can't quite see what there is to expand - one club goes phut, the lower division side best placed to put a competative side on the park takes their place (I know that this screws up the SL table, but there seems no other way out of this), the Sky fixtures as far as round 23 are announced with, presumably, the contracts with their OB provider signed.

It was me that suggested that Salford should be provided with the neccessary funds to complete the current licence period in SL, a different situation to your ' bankrolling '

If they just ' expected ' 8,000 to turn up, they are more stupid than I thought, all through the build term of Barton I was posting on the Salford site and actually predicting the problems you would have, I was told the ' business plans ' were in place to negate those fears, so dont bother quoting yet another one as proof of Salfords secure short term future

It will take 5 to 10 years of hard work and cash investement to make Salford at Barton a secure self sustaning SL club able to compete with the best, my suggestion was to get all our current clubs to 2015 when a total restructure will be needed, all IMO of course

It would seem I missunderstood your post, I read it as a Championship club just taking part in the magic weekend, not the full SL season

Sorry to chip in Red John but, it doesnt matter who may have looked at a business plan, it is only a plan.
You may recall that the Bulls had a robust achievable plan and look what happened there.

Who told you the club had such business plans in place? Just because something appears on a fans' forum doesn't mean it's true. Not even if they put 'FACT' in big important capitals at the end of it.

The club's forecasts were, it appears, based on attendances of 8000. These were obviously massively over optimistic, and you did spend a lot of time on the Salford forum saying that. The new business plan seems to be based on attendances closer to those achieved last season, which is - implicitly - what you were saying they should do, so why wouldn't you believe this plan is more viable?

No need to apologise. It's a public forum, after all.

Plans are, indeed, only plans, but you can look at a business plan and determine, within reasonable parameters, how viable that plan would be. A plan that shows Salford pulling in 8000 in their first season at Barton was like a Baldrick plan. A plan based on drawing attendances similar to last season seems more reasonable, doesn't it?

He did say 'firms like KPMG', but by this he meant 'two firms, one of which was KPMG', not 'a firm called PKGM, which is a firm like KPMG'.

Do you have any evidence to suggest John WIlkinson is stringing this out?

In the fans meeting, he told us there were two interested parties. If you know neither of them exist, can you tell us how you know this?

Absolutely right.
I cant remember which footie chairman it was (it may have been Ken Bates back in his Chelsea days), who always spoke of budgeting for a mid table finish and going out of both cups in the 1st round that they played in (obviously 3rd round of the FA Cup etc, but you know what he meant) and this was to prevent over ambitioous spending.
Certainly a number of SL clubs have been guilty of hoping/expecting too much and its certainly a shame for your club, who appeared from the outside to be following a sensible plan. Although if you did need 8000 fans to "break even", then clearly,, not enough was being done to achieve this in terms of marketing and promotion and you certainly weren't helped with the enforced switch of the Wakefield game at the end of last season.
FWIW, I hope that you come through the other side, good luck !

It depends if this new plan includes a sizeable marketing budget, and somebody on the payroll able to deliver the neccessary work to increase the support base, if it does then it might stand a chance of success

No i don't have evidence. It is only my opinion. Up to now i have been right every step of the way on what will happen. With Luke Pattern lodging a second petition it looks like more money will be required immediately to stave off major major problems. I just think the closer you get to the start of the season there is more chance that the RFL will have no choice but to assist to avoid further embarrassment and problems

Also the phrase 'firms like kpmg' does not mean that one of them was kpmg, unless of course a further statement has been made saying that. I have only taken the literal meaning of the official statement.