Quote ="GrahamBray"You may be right but I think he just says things as he sees them, to be honest, and it's the brutal truths that sometimes we don't like to hear. I have no idea if he attends matches, but I would think he does , given that a llot of what he says is what we witness week in , week out, of late. I have hope that we are just in that awkward stage of balancing the books, then able to kick on without a huge millstone of debt constricting the club's ability to sign good players.
What concerns me more than ever, and it may have always been this way is that the available talent out there, is an ever shrinking list. The game itself is in danger I think, in its present entity, of collapsing.
If we are struggling, with a good fan base and the income streams we generate, there can be little hope for any club that doesn't have a rich backer. Leigh, Rovers, Warrington, Wigan & Saints all do, but would they be able to sustain and improve their clubs without them? Very likely not, so whatever IMG decide to do to grow our game is going to need to be innovative and successful quickly, because the appetite for RL, apart from the hardcore M62 corridor, is just not there. We are essentially a second rate sport and probably better suited to the part time model that was the game before SL. The UK public in general don't view our game as the Australian public do, so following their model is not the blueprint for this game, as there just isn't the interest in the sport to sustain what we have now, without rich benefactors footing the costs and losses.
Sad i think, but true.'"
That may well be true but even as a part time sport , only very few clubs were successful . We were lucky in the late 70’s and early 80’s to have the backing we had, although some very dodgy stuff went on and nearly did for us, I remember a Director losing a briefcase stashed with about £30k , which was a lot back then considering we and Rovers signed players for a then world record fee of about £70k (Evans,Casey, Fairburn) and we tried in vain with several attempts to lure John Woods for over £100k, but then Wigan came in, had as much cash as The Bank Of England and the game was never the same , so either way , full or part time , the clubs with financial clout dominate .
On topic , I would make a play for some like Trndell at The Sharks , or even Matt Moylan , although past his prime he is a step above anything in SL when he’s on his game .
