JonM

Didn't we already have it explained earlier in the season that it was too difficult to travel back from Wigan to Leigh on a Thursday night?

If Sport England turns off £12 million in funding because the RFL isn't following the various rules and regulations, they really ought to be concerned. Likewise if they get sued because they're acting without legal authority. Probably neither of those things will happen - but in a normal, competently run body, you'd be thinking about it. Particularly when Sport England is looking for spending cuts anyway.

17449 Wigan v Leigh 15602 Leeds v Hull 30166 Canterbury v Sydney City 20125 Newcastle v Parramatta 32165 Dolphins v NZ Warriors 18965 NQld Cowboys v Manly

The whole fan ownership thing in the first place was a bit of a red flag - was very clear that they didn't know/ hadn't bothered to find out that there are laws about offering shares in a company to the public.

Their home ground is listed as Silverstone, maybe pop along and see whether they're real next time you're in the Northants/Oxford area?

Yes, they certainly won't take anything like 10k.

I would guess Oldham would take a fair number, as they've never played at Wembley previously, and have quite a decent level of latent support. Mike Ford said "I would die, yes die, to go to Wembley with Oldham" which suggests the club will try to make quite a thing out of it if they do win the semi-final.

Yes. However, the administrators' legal duty is to get as much money as possible for the creditors. If Salford City Reds (2013) Ltd goes into administration, their assets are pretty much some kit, some rugby balls and (presumably) the copyright/ trademark of the club name and badge. Perhaps also any remaining RFL funding for the year, perhaps the website, database of ticket holders and so forth has some value too. The players' contracts are presumably no longer valid, the place in superleague is gone, and I would guess so is the stadium lease. So there is really nothing stopping the RFL giving the superleague place to a new company, the players and other staff signing for that new company and the council allowing that new company to rent the ground. The administrators are likely to be amenable to working with the RFL because the only likely buyer for the assets the company does have would be a new successor club. That's how so many dodgy-looking prepack liquidations where the same directors with the same business appear to be legal. The problem here might be who gets to appoint the administrators - if the current directors do it before the creditors do, that might affect the outcome.

The (recently updated) accounts seem to show approx £30 million in assets and £38 million debt, with approx £21 million of that being a 25 year mortgage and the rest being loan notes for which the holders (presumably the city council and/or Peel) are not currently seeking repayment, and preference shares (not currently redeemable). I would think the issue is more having the stadium generate enough income to keep paying the mortgage than the size of the debt.

They wouldn't be doing the same thing though, would they? They'd see out the last 3-4 months of the season with suitable RFL funding and then drop down to part-time in the championship next season, which is a level that the club's fanbase can support. No pre-match appearances by the Happy Mondays, no pre-season trip to Portugal, no signing players from championship clubs by offering higher wages etc. The problem throughout has been trying to operate at SL level with ~3000 fans, which isn't sustainable without significant money coming in from somewhere else.

@Northern Eel @daz39 Still a couple of hours to get your entries in...

I thought James Child spoke well, and was quite diplomatic about what is happening - certainly no criticism of individuals from him. Surprised he has time from his upmarket estate agency to get involved in RFL politics.

That's what should happen (and what I expect to happen). Creditors, including HMRC, will unfortunately lose out, and it may be that the club has to operate under direct control of a board appointed by the RFL & Salford City Council until such time as suitable new owners can be found.

They have a college competition which is nearly finished - I think University of Beirut currently top of the table. They had a stall at the Beirut Sports Festival last week to recruit players, coaches and officials for this year's domestic competition (one recent game had 3 female officials BTW). Given the current security situation in the country, it's obviously difficult to predict what will happen and whether teams can travel - the Lebanese Premier League in soccer was suspended for several months, for example.

The council are pretty much the only ones who come of this well - they've done their utmost to keep SRD going.

It's not really the BBC's job to promote ticket sales for the RFL, but I assume most viewers are able to use Google.

They're not far behind Wales in terms of numbers of competing teams, tbh, and they're not relying on off-season Union players to make up those clubs either. Considering there's been a war going on (there was even Israeli gunfire hitting a United Nations base yesterday), I think we can cut them a bit of slack.

Three adults (admittedly eldest son lives in London) going this year and I doubt we'll spend more than £250 total on tickets, transport, food & drink and that's including a pre-match restaurant meal and a stop in the motorway services on the way back. It does show the false economy of selling tickets for big events for £20 though - the cost of getting in is not that big a part of the total.

1. Will a drop goal be scored in Saints v Catalans? 2. Wigan v Leigh finished 0-1 in February. Will either side score more than 24 points this time? 3. Will Leeds beat Hull? 4. Rowan Milnes has missed 100% of the conversions in 3 of Castleford's last 6 games. Will he score more than 4 conversions this week against Salford? 5. Will York beat Bradford in the 1895 Cup Semi Final? Tie-breaker: How many points will North Wales score against Newcastle Thunder?

Who do you think will overtake Barrow? They've got Fev away, York away, Oldham away and Doncaster away still to come, so potentially a few four-pointers, but it's not obvious to me that any of Widnes, Doncaster or Fev are particularly likely to win more games than they lose which they'd need to to overhaul Barrow, who definitely have a few winnable looking home games. As you say though, a lot depends on injuries and lack of depth outside the first 17.

It could. I think you could play such a match anywhere in England and get a crowd. But - you have to do the work to promote it and I don't think the RFL has the know-how or the boots on the ground. England v Brazil in the women's world cup was a perfect example. OK, it was Leeds, but it was a game where you had dozens of primary schools turning up en masse - five figure crowd, great occasion, great atmosphere etc. for an 80-point mismatch. That could be repeated anywhere if you have people who can organise it. Leigh for the RLWC2021 games they hosted (and also the women's soccer world cup) is another example of how to turn an otherwise not particularly compelling international game into a great event with a build-up, flags and signage around the ground. The England v France games the RFL has staged in the same venues - Doncaster, Leigh etc. are perfect examples of how not to do it. Thing is, it needs to be in support of something. There's no point playing a game in Norwich unless you can also say - kids, if you want to play, go here. If you want to watch your local team, here's how. It would be interesting if say Bedford or Anglian Vipers were given the opportunity to piggyback off such a game.

The TotalRL equivalent of Godwin's Law is that any sufficiently long discussion eventually turns to traditional county boundaries.

It was a close game against Widnes, one that Hunslet could have won, and they were on top for most of the game. They won at Batley the week before. I think York will win pretty comfortably, but would be very surprised if it's a thrashing. Hope they've got a good referee for Batley.vs Bradford round 2. Maybe also someone to keep order in the Batley boardroom too.

Same everywhere though. Not many French players in the PSG team - I think it was just one of the starting line-up against Arsenal. Inter had 4 Italians against Barcelona, but they usually have fewer. Man Utd are probably unusually high in having Maguire, Mason Mount, Luke Shaw, Kobbie Mainoo.

We were on holiday in Sicily recently and did parkrun on Etna. Their old course was round an old volcanic crater, but it became dangerous (forest fires rather than lava or volcanic type stuff) and they've moved to doing a few laps in the pine forest at the bottom of the crater. Still amazing views though. Very different from the usual experience - less than 30 people and about half were foreign tourists. We all had to sign our name in the visitors books and pose for lots of photos. After the Italian briefing, there was a short English briefing given by a local whose English husband had proposed to her at Etna parkrun the year before. It was the run director's 73rd birthday and this was celebrated with what looked like a complete shopload of pastries and desserts and several bottles of prosecco, plus multiple speeches and several different songs. Other tourists included Wests Tigers fans (living in Brisbane) doing a tour of Europe and a couple doing a 'parkrun islands' tour (like Inis Meáin one of the Aran Islands, Bressay on Shetland etc). Presumably by that logic you could do any parkrun in Great Britain or Ireland too.