Simon Hall

NO ITS A RED FLAG THAT DOESNT PASS THE SNIFF TEST!

So despite the RFL, the club owner and now the editor of the main UK RL publication coming out and saying there’s not a serious issue, nothing at all happening this week other than a podcast (where the accusations have been refuted by said owners, RFL and editor of major RL publication) you lads are getting increasingly revved up. Calm down ffs.

I wasn't repeating anything back to you, I was quoting something you said as it was a relevant point that people are missing and I thought it should be reinforced. The like emoji doesn't have the same effect.

Every business has cash flow issues but a short term credit facility is extremely expensive and a lot of interest will need to be paid. Anyone who runs a small business will know you can't just approach a bank and get 50k short or long term unless you're basically remortgaging your house. Taking your own money early will have cost nothing, other than the clubs reputation getting trashed by people on the internet obvs.

I actually thought it a bit surprising that a journalist is seemingly defending York, doesn't normally happen when there's an issue at a club. Could be as simple as he's spoken to people who know what's happening and believes them. Certainly didn't feel as if Martyn has any bias towards York at the start of the season when he was writing them off before the season started.

It does if there’s no money coming in from elsewhere. So if there isn’t we’ll see it all unravel very quickly.

Fair enough, I haven’t listened to that.

I haven’t seen or heard anything at all about missed or late pension payments. From the people I’ve spoken to it was just a one off cash flow issue that’s now sorted and there’s nothing to be concerned about. Players and staff have always been paid on time. The club owner, the RFL and the coach have all come out and addressed the issue publicly, players have said there’s no problem, investors have been in contact with the RFL who are satisfied with what they’ve seen. We’re speaking to high profile coaches and players for next season and planning for SL. It can’t be easy to attract quality people when no one even knows the format of the league for next season or the amount of funding but York are still managing it. No smoke without fire and all that, and it’s certainly not ideal but the main smoke is coming from gossip and not people who are actually involved.

Joking aside, if there was any sort of joined up thinking in the sport then this fixture would have been at a time it didn’t clash with a Knights fixture. There’s a lot of people who’d be going to Magic Weekend but have amateur commitments throughout the game, you’d think it a bit of common sense to not have any amateur fixtures at all this weekend.

Previous success at the top level counts for a lot. There'll be loads of people still watching Bradford that have seen them as World Champions and it doesn't take much to get lapsed fans back, it takes an age to create new ones. If Wigan or Leeds went pop 5 times and had a decade out of the top flight and won nothing, they'd still get 10,000 first year back in SL. I'm sure some will disagree but despite well over 100 years of history, York are basically an expansion club who are trying to grow the game and attract new fans to RL. If it's not given time then there's no chance of it growing, this season I've been able to get 4 or 5 mates to come to most home games - yet over the past 40 years I can count on one hand how many games I've managed to drag someone to. We got royally pumped by Wigan but my mates enjoyed the day and are coming back, but weren't even slightly interested when we were pumping teams last year.

I never said it was, I fully agree that it takes more. But we've had 6 months and increased our crowds to a 5800 average when less that 10 years ago we were getting 500, so it might be a good idea to give things time to grow in all aspects of the club.

My point is you're comparing York with Salford, Huddersfield and London when they had years to build their businesses as a full time entity. It's so much easier to get money from sponsors, investors and supporters when you're playing Leeds, Wigan etc every week than Dewsbury & Batley. Similarly things go wrong much faster when you've got a full time wage bill. Even things like the entry fee, we're charging £25 where other SL clubs are charging £30. If we charged that there's a potential £40k extra at every home match, but we couldn't increase the price in year one as it would be too much of a rise from last season and everyone would have complained. There's loads of issues with being a new full time club and most take time to iron out and cash flow will be one of the insues. Same as any business that expands.

We've had 6 months in SL. Those 3 have had the best part of 30 years each.

Yeah, York have no idea what it's like being in the league(s) below SL do they?

I know I'm terribly biased but the fact is 4 young English players have made their Super League debut this year off the back of the Newcastle partnership. Already it's doing much more to give young English players an avenue to SL than the vast majority of clubs in the Championship and some SL clubs are doing. Don't see that mentioned anywhere near as much as the fact they use a York Pullman coach to get to games.