Having read various opinions on the running of the club over the past few weeks on social media, and see'ing a minority of comments about sacking the board etc, it made me realise that the younger fans won't remember what it was like pre Simon Moran.

Although he joined the Warrington board in 1999, he bought the controlling shares in 2003 and effectively became the owner of the club. So Simon Moran has now owned the club for 20 years, and wondered what everyone's thoughts are on him with the recent issues and under achievement by the club ?

[size=50Apologies in advance if this has been mentioned on another thread and already discussed. [/size

We can chunner about never having won the big one when we really should have done during this period but without Moran we'd not have been to 6 challenge cup finals and 4 Grand Finals. None of that ever seemed likely when I was younger. We've had a turbulent time of late but you can still see that Moran and co are trying to get it right which we should be thankful for.

I see Simon as an enabler - he's done his bit by spending his money. I'm not convinced that the rest of the hierarchy within the club has given him value (aside from the 2010-13 period) in terms of professionalism, ruthlessness and succession planning . Most other clubs would kill to have an owner like him and I don't think we've made the most of it. He probably saved the club from a far worse fate.

He has my full support. He's saved us as a club, put us on a sound financial footing, and yes, we haven't been as successful as we'd have wanted to have been, but in all reality, apart from Wigan, Saints and Leeds, who has.

Long may he continue in his current role.....

Nice thread Abe.


Without trying to derail it several years back I put up a couple of threads about the Moran years and the board structure. I even showed the board structure for the two companies involved with who fitted in where.
Unfortunately it was all too way above for here and the abusive pile ons from various members ensued.
Rather than remove the abusive comments the mods deleted the threads
So interesting to see if you get similar abuse and thread deletion

As far as I'm concerned, The man deserves nothing but complete respect and gratitude From everyone in and around the club.
He put his money where his mouth is, and made it possible for all the big signings we've had, whether they've been good or bad, he's made it happen. It's been a rollercoaster ride that's for Sure and he's with us....Good Man!

It's hard to imagine what position the club would be in now without Simon. We probably wouldn't have the HJ and its possible the club would no longer exsist if he hadn't made the decision to get involved to the level of buying the club.
In latter years it could be argued that he has taken a step back with the club but he does have other business interests and can only have so many spinning plates, especially post covid.
Personally, as a supporter all my life I'm grateful to Simon and did take the opportunity to tell him so once and he just smiled and thanked me.
He seems a shy man who doesn't appreciate any publicity at all but for certain he's one of us, but has the finances to make a difference.
Blame for under performance on the pitch should be levelled at all concerned but it isn't through lack of commitment on the owners part.

A fine example of the problem being the messenger and not the actual message, maybe??...

Yes he joined the board of Warrington Sports Holdings Ltd in1999 and is currently one of 8 board members. If he is the majority shareholder do you know the purpose and function of the additional “person with significant control’

Also to me as club owner it seems strange that he doesn’t sit on the board of the Warrington football club Ltd

If it wasn’t for Moran we’d now all be moaning about possible relegation from the championship and why Kear didn’t drop Dudson, Matautia and Minikin for the trip to Dewsbury.

It's good to see some positivity and sensible comments here.
Yes, Moran deserves a massive thank you for what he's done for the club.
At the end of the day he's a fan - through and through.

As has been mentioned, many of the 'facetube' generation have no idea or comprehension of 'pre HJ' days - post Tony Barrow. (For all its' faults, the old Wilderspool ground was intimidating to the opposition).
We did have some great players back then (but not at the same period) and ocasionally a great run - generally in the cup, but we tended to rely on 'hope' rather than what we have now - which is closer to 'expectation' from many.

Our game needs more people like Simon.
His involvement is a positive not just for the Warrington club but rugby league in general.

Love the guy.

We owe him a debt of gratitude for investing his money into a club we all love.

Moaners and detractors can bore off elsewhere.

The Warrington Rugby club co is owned by the Sports Holdings company right? Of which Moran is a Director (and major shareholder) of. I would assume any other person of significant control would be Middleton? As far as I know he’s put in at least £2m in to the club over the years - that was before covid I think.

He has been an absolutely fantastic owner and we all owe him a huge amount of gratitude. Others have already given all the main tributes I'd want to say.

When we moved into the new stadium Simon Moran drove the club forwards and helped completely transform our mentality. I remember being in the queues at the club shop for Andrew Johns merchandise when we brought him in, in summer 2005 and thinking the club was completely unrecognisable from where we were 3 years earlier battling to avoid relegation at Wilderspool with a championship level squad. We had internationals like Gleeson, Fa'afili and Swann already, then we brought in Andrew Johns. Then over the next few years we were adding guys like Morley, King, the Monaghans, the Andersons, Hicks, Hodgson, Solomona, Waterhouse. Suddenly Warrington were a big name in the world of rugby league who top players wanted to play for.

How much of that was due not only to Simon Moran's investment but also his contacts and ability to sell the club and vision and get superstar players to sign for us. I guess that is what being a promoter is about. I also think Paul Cullen was a good foil for Simon Moran in that era - he had the charisma and media presence to be the front man for the club's ambitions while Simon Moran kept a low profile behind the scenes.

You can split the last 20 years into two halves. Whereas 2003-13 was an exciting ride with a sense of the club going places, 2013-23 has been largely frustrating with a sense that we have underachieved. I think there have been some bad decisions over that time and some things have been allowed to drift. But we should also remember that the wider environment has been very different. The higher NRL salary cap has made it harder for British clubs to bring over the real top players so guys like Morley and King aren't available any more. Unfortunately we've ended up overpaying for some mediocre players because that's all that has been available.

Also the last few years have brought other challenges which Simon Moran will have had to deal with, away from the club. Brexit has made it harder to attract acts from Europe due to the complicated additional bureaucracy for artists doing gigs in the UK. Covid and the restrictions on live events basically put everything on hold for the best part of 2 years. It's been a difficult time to be an events promoter.

So whilst we have all been a bit disappointed in recent years and that contributes to the occasional frustration that gets voiced on here against people at the top of the club including Simon Moran, we have to accept that the wider environment hasn't been the same as it was in say 2004-10 when he was landing big signing after big signing.

I know these bitter remainers try to blame Brexit for many things, blaming it for Wire being sh!+e might be pushing it a little too far....

H ha that's a new one, blaming Brexit on our inability to win the big one. It gets blamed for everything else, so why not.

I will be eternally grateful for Simon Morans involvement over the last 20 years or so.
The only problem I have is that in order to provide the necessary funds he then had to persuade Take That to reform so with every silver lining there is a cloud.

On a serious note I dread to think where we would be without him. You cannot even really call the money he has pumped in as an investment as I suspect that he knows that he will not get a financial return on that cash.

I just hope that one day we see him on the pitch at Old Trafford after a grand final celebrating.
For what he has done he deserves at least one of those moments.

I know Abe said at the start that Simon Moran bought controlling shares in 2003 but since he was on the board from 1999 the other point to remember is what happened in 2002 when we were faced with relegation and somebody on the board put up money to bring in Nat Wood and Ben Westwood from our relegation rivals Wakefield.

That investment was massively significant. We might well have gone down without Nat Wood in 2002 and he also helped take us to being a playoff team in two of the next three years, when we hadn't made any of the previous SL playoffs. Westwood became a club legend.

So, whoever put their hands in their pockets to pay for Westwood and Wood in 2002, thank you!

I also seem to remember at the time that Westwood wasn't the first choice, our main target was Neil Turley who was still in the Championship with Leigh but was scoring bags of tries. He overplayed his hand in negotiations and we switched to Westwood. That turned out to be a big blessing for us...

Bought moran a drink in walkabout after the Wembley win in 2009 and he never got me one back. I've had a grudge against him ever since!!! Horrible bloke!

Simon Moran, I thank you.

It was a long time between the Regal Trophy win in 1981 to the Challenge Cup win in 2009.

I know it was Moran that funded those moves. His intention was always to take control of the club once the future of the new stadium assured our financial stability.

They were important signings as you say, to secure our SL status ahead of the stadium move.

We have him to thank (Middleton, too) for their much needed investments, we have them to blame for their poor coach appointments, too (bar Smith, who stayed too long).

The key [iwhat might have been[/i was the poaching of Peter Deakin by Sale RU. He transformed the club from going through the motions, to helping to get (with DVDV) the likes of of Langer, Gee, Nikau, Nutley, McCurrie, and for his short stay, Blakeley. We LOOKED like we could compete (on paper, at least) with the big boys. He brought the Bradford "razzamataz" with him. Couple that with Moran's money.....

As Marlon Brando once said

"Coulda been a contender
Coulda been somebody"

Fate, and professional rugby union, is a bugger

I think the biggest jolt RL ever received was when Union went professional. The end of our happy hunting grounds.

I'm not 100% sure about Deakin. He definitely had great enthusiasm and was very different from the other RL administrators back then as he believed in promoting and selling the game. He had some bold ideas like the free jersey with a season ticket, and getting Langer over was a real coup as back then nobody outside Wigan used to sign the Aussie greats.

But the club still felt like it was run in an amateurish way when he was here. Others on here more in the know might know better but I remember hearing a few years later that some of the commercial deals that were signed when Deakin was here were not great and saddled us into contracts on bad terms. I think we were much better off with Andy Gatcliffe who made us a more professionally run organisation.

Still, Deakin did give us some energy in those 18 or so months he was here and signing Langer and getting a spike in crowds in 2000 was important in that it established us as a club that was at least trying to break out of mid-low table mediocrity. In the first few years of Super League it felt like we were rotting away, selling our best players and in danger of becoming SL also-rans.

This was an era where I used to go home and away a lot of the time and I remember noticing a shift in the type of fans we had, around that 2000 season. You get used to recognising the same faces at games and at club functions and I definitely remember seeing a lot of new people in 2000, more families, more women, including younger women, whereas before then it was a bit dominated by scallies and grumpy men (the type you'd see in "Pondlife corner"icon_wink.gif. Maybe we became a bit more "middle class". A bit like how football audiences changed after Italia '90 and Pavarotti.

I'd be interested to know how many fans we picked up during the Langer/Deakin era who stayed fans after that. If I was writing a book about the rebirth of the Wire leading up to the 3 Challenge Cup wins under TS, I'd start the story in 2000.

Companies house data shows two companies associated with Warrington Rugby club, Warrington Sports Holdings Ltd 1998 and Warrington Football club Ltd 1941.

I don’t know the split of the Rugby club assets between them.
Moran and Middleton sit on the Sports Holdings board.

The person of significant control is not a person it’s another company SJM holdings North Ltd, a music company owner Simon Moran and is there on both companies boards.
So if Moran is major shareholder what’s this other company of his there for?

Are we controlled by a music company and not the board directors?

Further Moran is director or partner in about 25 organisations and Middleton 6, so their time for Warrington looks very limited