I do agree but if they go under SL is a team short so every team loses a home game. And I'm not convinced that next best scoring team Toulouse are really wanted there due to the travel expenses. Suppose it could be an excuse to bring Bradford back in at last though.

Administration would be a disaster for the Salford club but also the Salford mayor Paul Dennett given the amount of resource and political capital he has spent on Salford. It would be heartbreaking for everyone involved now the stadium deal has been agreed and being finalised.

I don’t know a great deal about the situation but it would be strange for the Salford council to put the money and time into buying the stadium that they have to just let them go to wall when everything is all but sorted. I know we’ve heard it before with Salford but I think SL will give them the loan to see them through.

Clubs like us, Wakey and Cas have all has to make cutbacks recently. Salford obviously can't afford to run at the level or quality of squad that they have but just get the begging bowl out ever year.

They shouldn't have a business plan based on hypotheticals. Salford should operate at a size they can afford until the hypothetical becomes a reality.

In the last 2/3 seasons Salford have been dependent on Council loans, community shareholders and SL providing them an advance.

Where do you draw the line?

The game now for me is dependent on generous enthusiasts.
Rovers, Leigh, Cas, Wakey and hopefully ourselves have all had big cash injections or hand outs from benefactors over the last few years (Sadly you can't call them anything other than that really), Huddersfield will survive whilst Davey continues to bank roll them but take that away and they have been going backwards for years. But, after that they would seriously struggle. However, Salford have lived on loans, grants and gifts for years and I think they have over spent against their income etc. which is pretty foolish. Sadly the only way our game will survive is through each club having a 'sugar daddy' figure at its head. We have As fans become conditioned to it we don't look so much at clubs attendances as much as we do how much their owners are worth. That for me just reflects the fact that wherever it's coming from we don't have enough coming into the game to finance what we have to put out, it's basic economics really and what business would trade like that?

I agree (with one slight caveat, below). It’s mostly down to wider economic trends rather than poop management, imo. Which isn’t to say that the management isn’t poop, just that even if it was good it would only mitigate and not solve the problem.

It doesn’t even feel worthwhile discussing making the sport sustainable at this point.

That caveat - Salford spending beyond their means. It’s foolish from one pov, but the structure of the league and central distributions means clubs in that position (i.e. no sugar daddy) are damned if they do and damned if they don’t.

It's a compelling argument against increasing the salary cap. Pretty much no club can sustain spend at the current levels without outside support let alone an increased one. Union is a prime example of removing the spending ll8mits leading to stupid decisions being made.

Why should Salford be bailed out by the other clubs again when their business model clearly isn't sustainable whilst better run lower league clubs are left where they are

I feel sorry for the fans who have put money in to the club to help out but the club should have known better as they went through this after the Koucash reign..they sold Ackers and Croft last season and got £350.000? To help them out….what’s to say they won’t do this in 2026 as well.

If the Salford woes had serviced a month or so ago I think they would have lost their Super League status

Good post as usual Wilf. I don't think it's a new thing though. Neither Hull or Rvrs were financially sustainable in the 80's hence their problems soon after. Leed's and Widnes both went close to bankruptcy soon after. Wigan certainly ruled the roost till they had to sell it!
Bulls went for it but couldn't keep up with what they spent and it wasn't till St Helens were taken over that they were saved.

Questions need to be asked what financial checks they are so not, this black hole didn't appear in like 6 weeks since the season ended.

When we clearly dont have enough money coming into the game then you have to ask why have the RFL paid IMG circa £500000 for nothing but a flawed grading system.
The RFL could have told Wakefield and Castleford their grounds needed to be improved and added their own sanctions rather then hand out so much money for nothing.
What we dont know is how much they are liable to pay these spreadsheet Charlies over the contract period.
If its the same level as the first payment then thats just money down the drain which could have been used a lot more wisely to enhance the game and also used as an emergency fund for clubs in trouble.

Perhaps they should get Mr Starmer and MS Reeves in they seem to be experts a black holes and how to fix them

Just reading an article that Union is thinking of having a two leg playoff between the bottom side and Championship winner...but the Championship club will have to meet stadium criteria or have fimr ground improvement plans in place to go up, and its believed only Doncaster RU meet the criteria for the whole league. So we aren't the only sport pulling the drawbridge up to lower league teams.

Ealing Trailfinders finished top of the RU championship last year for the second time in three years but were refused entry to the Premiership because of their ground only having a capacity of 5000 (2200 seats). there's a lot of claims of elitism and 'snobbery' about the way they operate though.

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/ru ... ommunities Watch us end up with some plodder like Singleton

https://www.examinerlive.co.uk/sport/ru ... ommunities Watch us end up with some plodder like Singleton

It was always going to happen to the Red Devils as soon as clubs became aware that they had financial problems, and I say again if they had been honest from the start they would have lost their Super League status.
They have made a mockery of Super League and IMG

Matt Shaw now reporting an Aussie consortium are considering investing in Salford, read somewhere Robbie Farah wants to invest in the London Broncos too. The NRL are coming... but dealing directly with clubs rather than the RFL

I wouldn't blame anybody not wanting to deal directly with the insular RFL

Or the Salford chairman

Looks like the clubs have chickened out of passing judgement on Salfords advance as they are really concerned about their future ability to continue, in their present circumstances. So they have left the advance on their Sky money or otherwise up to The RFL and Rugby League Commercial. Oh dear!

That’ll end well then you’d think







From what I’ve read about Salford’s situation it certainly isn’t good as it’s not so much a cash flow issue as they seem to mad out. It’s seems to be more a case of a revenue stream they’d budgeted on simply wasn’t something that was a guaranteed option and a gamble to have done so.

Think the rest of SL should be rightly concerned on a number of things such as Salford being in such a hole financially at this stage, the fact they’ve spent what they simply haven’t got and whether they are actually a sustainable & viable prospect currently.

It also opens up to questioning the governance of the clubs & the IMG set up when a club has been able to get in such a big hole financially.

Think you hit on a fundamental issue there with modern-day rugby league (Super League in particular).

The endless tinkering with formats, the constant alterations to the calendar, the absence of traditional kits and colours, have all led to a sport which no longer has a recognizable identity. Union have managed to move with the times (eventually!) and expand their international game whilst maintaining links with their heritage to give a certain sense of continuity.

Even football, despite all the seismic changes which have happened in the sport over the past thirty years, have maintain links with their past. Man City were crowned champions last season by the same method and format that every other champions of England have done since league football commenced. We, on the other hand, seem to alter the play-off format every two or three years, creating little in the way of historical continuity.

Your point about traditional kits is highly pertinent in my opinion. The colours a club plays in are part of their image, identity and history, so why on earth don't all RL clubs celebrate that fact.
We should always, wherever possible, play in black & white irregular hoops. That kit, in those colours and design, are a part of what we are and who we are and we should celebrate it loud and proud, as should all other rugby league clubs.
In this age of corporate branding, I'm amazed that IMG didn't pick up on this in their attempt to reimagine the game for the 21st-Century.

There are so many issues with how the game is run and presented in the present-day, but the way we have burnt the bridges to our past in the name of chasing short-term gimmicks and fads is one of the biggest mistakes the sport as a whole has made. We've ended up (over the past thirty years) in losing a great deal of history, tradition and identity whilst gaining very little new in the so-called name of progress.

Maybe I'm just another old-timer with his head stuck in the past, but these days I increasingly struggle to see exactly what the sport is aiming to be, who it is aiming itself at and how it projects itself as an exciting vibrant sport, which it still can be despite all of the endless going round in circles that we have witnessed throughout the summer Super League era.

(And that's my rant over for tonight! I went off on one as usual!



).

That’s not what BBC Sport is saying. Apparently the clubs have agreed to the advance of £500,000.

That £500000 they have just wasted on a load of spreadsheets would have come in handy