West Wales Raiders part-owner Peter Tiffin has revealed the club held a crisis meeting on its future, days before their embarrassing Challenge Cup defeat to Swinton Lions.
The Raiders lost 96-0 at home to fellow League 1 side Swinton in their first competitive match of the new season last weekend.
The club are yet to appoint a new head coach for the campaign and Tiffin revealed that assistant coaches Ben Flower and Gareth Davies had also left before a match had been played.
“Last Monday we held a crisis board and staff meeting on not only the season ahead but the future of the club,” said Tiffin.
“It was an unanimous decision from all that nobody wanted to see the club finish after all the hard work from everyone at the club currently plus everyone who has gone but done so much to get the club to where it is in such a short space of time.
“Even though everyone was fully on board to continue as a club and to progress with our plans set in place when we moved from amateur to professional four years ago it was going to be a massive task to get our Challenge Cup fixture to go ahead.
“With no head coach in place, the loss of both our assistant coaches a few days earlier, only six contracted players and our irreplaceable team manager in hospital it was going to take everyone to work together to get everything needed to fulfil our Challenge Cup fixture.
“As part owner I take full responsibility of the situation we were in last week, each year we seem to lose our head coach and this year was no different.
“We should have appointed a head coach straight away to support the staff we had put in place but left it and left it, after our board and staff meeting we then wanted to invite all players past and present to our training facility in Bridgend to allow them all to speak up and feedback to us all on areas they wanted to see improving, from this meeting we went from six contracted players to 28.
“Following this we then employed a full-time doctor, invited four of the head coaches that applied previously for an interview, three of the assistants who had been involved in the game in Wales plus other key areas within the club to support and guide the club in the right direction.”
Tiffin also apologised for the “breakdown” of their relationships with Welsh clubs and Wales Rugby League, vowing to rectify that with an invitation to the staff and senior players of every club to their sessions over the next fortnight.
He said the club would interview the four coaching candidates this week, with West Wales’ next match coming on the final weekend of March when the League 1 season begins.
Since joining the division in 2018, West Wales have won only one match and drew another last season, finishing bottom of the league by a comfortable margin in all three completed seasons.