THE play-offs begin tomorrow (Friday) night when Leigh host Wakefield and the games look to be utterly compelling this year.

No team can count on anything and no potential match-up looks easy to predict.

Anyone who thinks that Leigh are a certainty to beat Wakefield need only look back to late March, when Trinity travelled to Leigh Sports Village and inflicted a convincing 40-14 defeat on their hosts, with Mike McMeeken scoring two tries, and Tom Johnstone and Olly Russell also grabbing two each.

Wakefield will take close to 2,000 supporters to the game and they will no doubt be trying to drown out the home fans.

I don’t know who will win that game, but I can predict far more confidently that it will be a very noisy evening.

The following night Leeds will host St Helens and this is another game that is desperately hard to predict.

I suspect that Leeds will win if Jake Connor is fit to play after having suffered from an apparent rib injury.

If he does play, I expect his combination with Brodie Croft and Lachie Miller to find a way of unlocking the St Helens defence, while the Saints attack is likely to be much less effective.

What slightly puzzles me about St Helens is that their coach Paul Wellens hasn’t given more runouts recently to their young halfback George Whitby who, instead of playing against Castleford on Friday night, instead turned out for Halifax and had a major role in their shock defeat of Oldham.

Will Whitby recalled for the game at Headingley?

Only Paul Wellens knows the answer to that question, but I can’t help thinking that Saints would be a more balanced team with Jack Welsby at fullback and Whitby at halfback.

Time will tell whether Paul Wellens wants to go down that route.

Wigan and the 14-club debate

Last week we were told that Wigan had sent a legal letter to the RFL requesting a pause in the process to have 14 teams in Super League in 2026.

The story was denied by Wigan chief executive Kris Radlinski, who claimed that the story was “factually incorrect”.

And he was quite right, because Wigan’s legal letter was in fact sent to the directors of Super League (Europe) Limited, which is the body that has the power to decide how many clubs should be in Super League and decided at its meeting in June to move to 14 clubs next year if the panel chaired by Lord Jonathan Caine could satisfy itself that two additional clubs had the financial and squad strength to be worthy additions to the competition next season.

In denying, quite rightly, that Wigan had written to the RFL, Kris didn’t mention that a letter had been sent, but to the Super League organisation.

The problem for Wigan is that they don’t seem to have any significant support from their fellow Super League clubs, who all seem to be committed to expanding the competition next year, if it can be achieved satisfactorily.

What now for Salford?

Now that they have been able to complete the season, which looked highly unlikely for much of the season, will Salford Red Devils be able to survive beyond the end of this month?

On any logical basis, you would have to say that it looks unlikely.

The club has debts of around £3 million, with no obvious means of repaying them.

Since February the new owners of the club have been promising to drop a huge amount of money into the club’s bank account, but no money has been forthcoming.

Is there any other organisation that would step forward to take over the club.

I wouldn’t have thought so, but then I read an article in the Sunday Times about Red Bull buying the Newcastle Falcons rugby union club.

“When Red Bull bought the club from the fatigued former owner Semore Kurdi in August, taking on £39 million of debt, the whole of English rugby punched the air,” said the article.

The Falcons’ turnover for the year to 30 June 2024 was £8,552,368.

So what makes a company like Red Bull take on that much debt when buying a struggling rugby union club?

And why is it so difficult to find someone to take on much lower levels of debt by acquiring a major sporting company in the heart of Greater Manchester?

If anyone can answer that question, I would be delighted to hear from them.