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Wellsy4HullFC

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Posts posted by Wellsy4HullFC

  1. 12 hours ago, yipyee said:

    Huddersfield replaced Halifax in that area but this looks like it will flip back again.

    Oldham was replaced with Salford and again a flip will occur. 

    Honesty think Rochdale and Oldham should merge as should halifax and huddersfield. Otherwise they will be forever fighting over the same talent and fans.

    The issue with these mergers is that they need a sense of identity, otherwise fans will not gravitate to them and they will very quickly die as an idea. They'd need to apply to join, and their application will surely need to come with evidence of fan support.

    Would a "West Yorkshire Giants" playing out of Halifax gain support?

    Or "North Manchester Hornets" playing out of Oldham?

    They're better prospects on paper geographically through association with bigger areas, but not necessarily in reality. I do think Oldham should tie-in with a casino though and go with Manchester Hold'ems 🤣

    • Like 1
  2. 15 minutes ago, Pulga said:

    Ridiculous. 

    Why pretend Batley is as beneficial as Toulouse or Catalans?

    Perth absolutely has to prove that it would be beneficial. If they produce two homegrown players in the next two decades it would be overachieving. 

    Toulouse is at least as important to the European game as Perth is to the ANZ game. 

    Think you've completely misunderstood what was being said if that's your take.

  3. Really hope NZ2 is next. That would be huge for the international game.

    If it's not, I'm not sure when it will come. Can't see expansion beyond 20 for a very very long time unless there's another sudden influx of cash and players from this current expansion effort. Be interesting to see who would be considered next. Brisbane 3? Adelaide? Cairns? Darwin? Central Coast? Sunshine Coast? 

    Out of interest, how have the traditional North Sydney fans responded to this? Happy they're back as a brand or annoyed they've been relocated?

    • Like 3
  4. 11 minutes ago, Damien said:

    If after Perth and PNG we can get NZ2 as the 18th team the NRL really will take on a great look.

    I do doubt though we will get 3 'expansion' teams in a row and can see another Queensland team next up.

    I do think the longer term goal has to be a 20 team league with NZ2, another Queensland team and then Adelaide to finish things off.

    Either way it's looking great for the sport in the region.

    Think your maths is a bit off...

    • Haha 1
  5. 23 minutes ago, Ethereal said:

    To recap as I understand the status quo.

    Curtiz Brown and Sire Kailahi own the club, but the potential funding in the background is from Dario Berta and Marlon Muller. They're the potential investors who are mainly interested in getting a nice deal from the council on the stadium and nearby land in exchange for taking on Salford in one form or another.

    Heads of terms have not been agreed, there's some mood music (mainly from Gary Carter) that they may be close to being agreed but that would still be the first step in a fairly lengthy process.

    As a side note it seems that Kailahi set up a company called Stadium Salford in 2023 (I think before he owned Salford) and received a 500k advance based on an agreement to sell tickets via eventbrite. This didn't happen and eventbrite are suing for their money back (and it seems like Kailahi has been stringing this court case as long as he can).

    Salford have about 170k of their central funding for the year left. Current monthly payroll is 110k so will eat up most of that (although reports are already floating around that the players won't be paid on time, which would be the 24th)

    Club debt is around 2.5m. The most pressing part is a 500k debt to hmrc that if doesn't get paid in the next week or so will lead to a winding up order being issued.

    The council aren't willing to put any more money in and a lot of players want to leave ASAP.

    To wildly speculate about things:

    The council will want some guarantees around the club to do a sweetheart deal for the land. The investors will want the minimum possible requirements. They may be playing a game of chicken with the council that if they don't do a deal then the club disappears altogether. They may also be quite happy with Salford having to drop down the leagues so they can run them per some council requirements but on a much lower budget.

    So option a) is that the council blinks, gives the investors a sweet enough deal that they complete the deal and keep Salford going in some form.

    (of course given the state of council finances at the moment it's tough for them to make a deal that will amount to essentially pouring more millions into Salford compared to them doing something without the deal).

    Salford not fulfilling their fixtures causes a major headache for Superleague in terms of their deal with Sky which guarantees six live games (even if Sky don't necessarily care hugely about the amount of content they'll happily take the money from penalty causes etc). Also is very damaging going into the next round of tv deal talks trying to sell yourself as a sport on the rise when you're losing a club and not fulfilling your contract. Martyn's talked about how not keeping Salford going might be more expensive than keeping them going. But neither option is cheap.

    So option b) is the rfl taking over and paying the bills.

    This would presumably include the 500k hmrc bill, and then the 110k monthly bill, so likely to be a 7 figure sum in total to see out the season (although you could cut that down if you allowed the players to leave, did some rules workaround on loans/dr players as a state of emergency and got a zombie squad patched together with all clubs pitching in a few each from their young players/reserves to get hammered every week but fulfil the fixtures. Then at the end of the season allow them to go bust (pending new owners). Some owners have been publicly against this but when it comes to it maybe they'll be convinced it's the least worst option.

    Option c) Some sort of phoenix Salford. Club goes into administration. Possibly gets bought out of administration or possibly a newco is formed (someone with more business knowledge than me would have to talk about if this could be done mid-season and if the new company could be put back into Super League, I don't think they could but don't really known enough to say). This may lead to them being more attractive to potential owners (of course there are rumours of NRL interest as with the Broncos and Super League in general) without the debt being attached for a more immediate rebuild of what could be seen as a distressed asset with potential, or more of a Newcastle Thunder style where it's back to being barely above amateur status and looking at a much longer timeline.

     

    But as long as this has dragged out it seems like there'll be an initial crunch point at the end of april, and we'll probably have the final answer by the end of may.

    Basically, they're trying to drag it along as long as possible, but we're at the point where the RFL are going to have to actually pay their own money.

    Now it's just a case of trying to make it as cheap as possible to not damage the game too much. If the players are going to leave, which is likely, then the cheapest option is for the rest of the league to loan players to the club to keep it going. I'm sure the teams fighting it out at the bottom may not be as willing to oblige, but the rest I'm sure won't have an issue.

    • Like 3
  6. Right, I'm trying to catch up with the latest as it appears something has happened (there's lots of people posting). I can't quite tell between the posts moaning about professionalism, other clubs, their own club, etc.

    What new has happened? Has the prospective takeover that everyone thought wasn't going to happen officially not happened?

  7. 15 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

     


    And, as it happens, the Championship and URC both shut down during six nations. It would appear they disrupt the club season rather than disrupting the club teams.

    Similar to what I’ve said, the only way I see it happening is shutting down the club season and play internationals the weekend after the mid week Origin.

    A 19 Round NRL when it goes to 20 teams with 3 international weekends following weekend after each Origin match could be a goer. If you've got 8 southern rep teams playing in huge matches (NSW, QLD, NZ, PNG, CI, Fiji, Tonga, Samoa), that could make the NRL more money.

  8. 14 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

    You would be better off just having standalone international rep rounds the weekend after Origin and players go into the national team camps the Monday prior to the international round.

    That could work. If you were to do it that way also, you could play more games at once rather than spread it over a number of weeks to reduce disruption.

     

    14 minutes ago, Sports Prophet said:

    Even then, for six international teams, you are still pulling 120 players out of their club environments. A big disruption to clubs, even if there are standalone international weekends. Even bigger if you want to do it three or four times in a tri nations concept.

    Again, other sports babe manage this to a much higher degree than rugby league. I just think it's a terrible e excuse.

    • Like 1
  9. 1 hour ago, Worzel said:

    Ah, you’ll have to forgive some over-enthusiasm at full time. We’re all human.

    My underlying point, clarified in calmer later posts (🤣), was that Rovers would have performed far better against 13 men because when Hull went down to 12 we left our structures, overplayed and tried to score off every ball when we were inside your 30. The errors and penalties that then flowed were the only reason FC were in a position to score so often. Teams with 12 men are no less of an attacking threat, our only advantage is when we had the ball, but you need rigour to take advantage. That’s as much a criticism of Hull KR as anything else. 

    But yes I do believe Rovers would have scored more points against 13, for these reasons. I also believe we’d have defended better, because most of Hull’s field position came from our ill-discipline, which came because we lost our patient structure. Maybe the word “stuffed” is excited hyperbole, but I stand by the point. 

    I think you're making a huge assumption that your indiscipline was down to us going down to 12. I just don't buy it. It's like thinking Saints would have done better against Wigan in the GF in 2014 had Flower not got sent off in the second minute.

  10. 8 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

    If you are talking about running those six nations over 2 x tri nations tournaments with a final each, at different times to each other and SOO, then considering three nations will be in camp for 3/4 weeks, consider what this means as a disruption to the NRL.

    SOO would mean two teams worth of top players missing from three rounds of NRL.

    Then tri nations 1 would mean approx 60 more players in camp, missing club football for 3-4 weeks.

    Then tri nations 2 would mean another set of 60 players in camp, missing club football for 3-4 weeks.

    It’s just way too disruptive to the club game. 

    Do Origin players miss club games for weeks? I thought they backed up? Or at least missed one round each game? Could be wrong. 

    8 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

    Let alone even considering players like Luai, who plays three Origins and then later wants to represent Samoa in their mid season tri nations series.

    Well obviously that wouldn't be possible, it would be one or the other in this scenario; and there are camps that believe you should only be able to represent Australia if you're in the SOO series. If there was actually a credible alternative to Origin, players wouldn't feel the need to switch between the two.

    • Like 1
  11. 11 hours ago, Worzel said:

    You went to the Quarter Final yeah? Could have been 50 odd if we’d not put the cue in the rack

    Goal differences are a good guide to genuine form. 

    Posts like this show how someone who can be very reasonable can still post absolute nonsense when it comes to their rivals. 

    Wakefield stuffed Leigh the other week then lost to them the week after. I'm sure you're aware things change week-to-week, but your judgement is clouded whenever you speak of your own club or your rivals. When it's both clubs, man we get comments as ridiculous as "we'd have stuffed them if they had all 13 instead of 12."

     

  12. 10 hours ago, jacksy said:

    The major turning point for me was the Asiata pen on contact with the kicker 

    That absolutely infuriated me. We had a great spell of momentum, we'd just pinned them in their 30 before the kick. I even clocked Asiata was gonna go for it. He barely even hit him, but it was still enough and I've no complaints for the ref calling it. It was absolutely dumb play that drained all our momentum, cost us possession, have them a set of 6 in our 20 and ultimately led to a try. 

    The difference between the teams was ultimately discipline. There were things that we did that were far better than what they did, and things they did that were far better than what we did. 

    Got a lot of hope for the rest of the season compared to the start. We are not far off already.

    • Like 1
  13. 17 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

    in your example above, you are taking effectively six starting lineups worth of NRL players out of the competition and it would need to shut down for 7 weeks. I don’t think that’s feasible for many reasons. I also think shutting down the NRL will help give the international games the exposure and exclusivity they deserve.

    At absolute best, I think there is room for a three week mid season international window, but the problem with poor attendances in the club game means that the NRL and their clubs are heavily exposed to being dictated to by broadcasters, how the RL season is scheduled.

    Again, I'm not suggesting all of the games are played at the same time, so I'm not sure how you'd need 6 starting lineups worth of players. If the NRL doesn't shut down for Origin involving 2 teams playing, why would it shut down a couple of weeks later for a different 2 teams? 

    • Like 1
  14. 7 hours ago, Sports Prophet said:

    Yeah maybe. It is an idea and not a bad one, but I have this feeling that Origin works mid week because so many people are invested in the result. That investment or interest in England, NZ, Samoa et al is significantly less and to play them on a Wednesday would be a ratings failure I expect. I don’t imagine broadcasters taking the punt on it.

    I'm just thinking that these days content sells. If players are willing to play midweek for Origin and that's now worth Megabucks, is it not worth jumping on the good vibes of the current growth in the Pacific Nations and have a competition mid season that's spread over a number of weeks? 

    E.g. NZ, Samoa, Tonga, Fiji, PNG, Cooks (or another); 2 groups of 3 and a final. That's 7 fixtures altogether that can be spread over 7 weeks, and a maximum of 3 for one nation (just like Origin is max 3).

     

    • Like 1
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