PhilCarrington

It used to happen a lot in lower leagues where the 4th official kept the time for sin-bins, totally separate from the official timekeepers. The 4th official often couldn't have stopped their clock when the ref signalled. I've seen 6 minute sin-bins. No excuse for getting the timings wrong at Super League level though.

How on earth did they manage to owe £114,967 in unpaid auto enrolment pension contributions. Assuming players wanted to maximise what the club put in (many being young lads probably opted out), would mean 8% of salaries (3% employee contribution) which suggests £1.4m of salaries where pension contributions were deducted but never paid over. Not all those salaries would be players, but that's an awful lot of months of missed payments.

Great promo video, but no fixtures or results on BBC website, which used to cover every NCL division

Back on subject, both regional news programmes had a feature on the Raiders tonight. Both pretty positive. Whilst the lack of home games is undoubtedly not good, they aren't the only club to have long spells with no home games in order to accommodate clubs that groundshare

You may well be right. But most of those net assets are fixed assets - they had net current liabilities of £0.2m at November 2020, which isn't a good sign either. Intrigued by the fact that Fev had R&D spend! Can't see that being something the administrator can flog off

If the wrong company story is true, does this mean the RFL have been paying central distributions to the company that isn't the member club? Given the RFL Operations Dept's usual enthusiasm to fine some clubs for any misdemeanour, they've missed an opportunity there.

So at the end of the Covid period he says they were debt free, but in 2024 they had a Covid loan of £450k. Wouldn't the Covid loan be there at the end of the Covid period. And presumably the original Covid loan. The 2020 accounts show 2 loans of £181.5k. Abbreviated accounts filed at Companies House don't give a lot of information, but no Covid loan mentioned at all, though there were other creditors due in > 1 year of £385k at November 2020. All somewhat at odds with the debt fee claim. Awful to see a club with such a history go into administration and drop out of the league (if only for 2025 hopefully) but not filing Nov 2023 accounts until January 2025 should have been a big red flag that there problems.

There was a finite salary cap about 8-9 years ago. It prevented clubs spending ridiculous amounts on players. Didn't stop clubs spending beyond their means, but it certainly helped. That rule got dumped for the benefit of two clubs that lobbied hard to the same cap as SL. There also used to be a salary cap auditor who visited clubs and reviewed salary cap returns in a lot more detail than has been the case since he was let go. Again not a prevention of overspend, but it helped.

London Broncos have certainly played a lot of home game far from London. Not a good advert for the idea.

given that oldham are talking about playing at Leigh Sporting Village, maybe they could move there and we could have 4 sides playing there.

ouch

In the press release, Nigel Woods says “Just 10 years ago it would have been unthinkable that teams from Wales and London would contest a major final and the success of the Crusaders and Skolars offer compelling evidence of the burgeoning appeal of Rugby League. I seem to recall a team from London actually reached a major final just over 10 years ago. They made the Super League play-offs 10 years ago. Has Nigel Wood forgotten about Broncos when he wrote this ?

And has also played for Skolars in the Northern Rail Cup.