LeytherRob

I’d do the same, but Hodgson right wing outside of Hanley when he is back

I'd expect nothing less than the guys who booked the Happy Mondays at literally the first crumb of good news they had. Knowing what we know now with regards to the deal hinging on the land and stadium sale, which was nowhere near done at the time, that 1 week period of the sustainability cap being lifted just gets wilder and wilder.

“But according to sources, Irwin allegedly did not resign but was relieved of his duties as chief executive by the club's owners. rugbyleaguehub.com Long Readsunderstands Graver left his post with Salford last week. It is believed Graver was unhappy with how the owners had been operating and resigned after a disagreement. As the company's sole director, Graver cannot formally leave until a replacement is found. He is a business consultant and became involved with the owners when he offered them a company director and secretary service. On Companies House Graver is listed as the only director of Salford RL Group LTD. That company is owned by Jacobsen Venture Group Limited, and its two directors are Red Devils assistant coach Krisnan Inu and Isiosaia Kailahi.”

wrong thread

Seen a few different Salford fans on social media claiming that apparently Irwin didn’t tender his resignation and actually found out at the same time as everyone else when the statement went online…

Chris Irwin has resigned as CEO. Looking bleak right now

I'm exactly the same with regards to your final statement. 2023 felt like there would probably never be a better opportunity to win a major trophy again and now that box was finally ticked it's really taken the pressure off. I've found since Wembley that I rarely get nervous at games full stop anymore.

Also worth noting that it's the 3rd major semi-final in our 3rd year since promotion - CC semi in 2023, SL playoff semi in 2024, CC semi in 2025. It's arguably already Leigh's most sustained period of competing at the top of the game and we're not done yet.

To borrow a phrase from your side of the political isle, facts don’t care about your feelings

UK armed forces can get anywhere up to £650,000 paid out for injuries whilst serving - https://www.gov.uk/claim-for-injury-received-while-serving/what-youll-get There is also the War Pension scheme with specific provisions to compensate for injury or illness - https://www.gov.uk/guidance/war-pension-scheme-wps builders with lung conditions are eligible for compensation through the workers compensation act of 1979 - https://www.legislation.gov.uk/ukpga/1979/41/contents Everything does come with risk. Being exposed to unnecessary risk by your employer gives you legal mechanisms for recompense and has done long before ‘the nanny state’ or ‘wokeness’ or ‘health and safety gone mad’ or whatever you want to label it.

Yeah and if you’re going to blame anyone in the press, it probably shouldn’t be the unabashed Salford fan who has published almost every lie you’ve told him without any critique. The poor guy was still peddling the ‘money laundering regulations’ spin weeks after everyone realised it was nonsense.

That’s a terrible analogy since both those industries come with massive pay offs and/or pensions if and when you get injured in the act of doing those jobs.

I remember being stood behind a Hudds fan queuing for a pint after Hudds had just got pumped by Saints at MW '23 who complained for about 5 minutes about how poor they'd just performed, then without a hint of irony started talking about how he thought Ian Watson would be a future England coach.

And if I was on here 5 years ago saying Leigh could get promoted, win the challenge cup and have consecutive playoff appearances whilst averaging over 8k spectators I'd have been laughed off the board. Any one of those clubs could make a dent in the top flight if they managed to get the right momentum behind them in terms of funds, coaching etc. The judgement was based on the past 5-10 years of poor crowds and performances fluctuating from decent to mostly abject. Producing those players is great, but it's a luxury only afforded to the incumbents of super league + Bradford who got to retain their academy. It's only really possible with the commercial security of SL, not to mention the playing opportunities at an elite level - lest you want all the players you've developed to be picked off before even establishing first team like at Bradford (Hudds the beneficiary of many of those). For the record, I was never advocating that we just rip Hudds out to swap them with a Champ club - merely pointing out that there is very little difference to quite a large amount of clubs in the game once you strip away the SL status. Clubs should not be immune to consequences of consistent poor performance just because they were on the right side of an arbitrary line at the right time in history - and I include my own club in that.

They were also just starting to run into another problem, the same which the likes of Branson and Koucash hit, which is in reality a salary capped sport actually serves to keep the established clubs on top. Barring your 2/3 marquees where you can go nuts (which Toronto did in spades with SBW on more than the average team combined), the rest of the squad it's impossible to outspend a team like Wigan because all the exemptions for homegrown and internationals. Coupled with the fact that any expansion team has to pay overs to convince players to move from the M62, they'd have struggled to be anything more than a bottom 4 squad which showed with them getting pumped in SL prior to covid. At some point, every outsider money man eventually gets bored of not being able to get past that glass ceiling without decades of input into boring things like infrastructure/player pathways and they pack it.

100% no they would not, certainly not Hudds under their current levels of commercial performance, and several years ago I was making the same argument with Leigh included in that list when the debates about the 8's, P&R were rolling along on here. There are several clubs which would/could offer a lot to SL if the opportunity presented itself at the right time just like it did for Leigh which is why it's important not keep randomly closing the drawbridge at various points in history - all it does is protect the incumbents and let them drag the rest of SL down with slipping standards.

I still cannot wrap my head round Huddersfield letting 2 home grown wingers go in the Senior twins to bring in the likes of Wallis, who was massively error prone at Cas

If you’re losing well in excess of £4M per year, and extra £1M in income is still a hugely loss making business that isn’t financially viable. That’s just standard maths.

Should Toronto have received a fair slice of central funding? Yes Would it have made a difference to their financial security? No

Then I'd love to see how what you've said would translate into the millions it was taking to keep them going, when even established and far bigger clubs like Wigan are losing money currently. 1. They were already at the limit of Lamport stadium, they could have moved to BMO field(28k) but that would have only led to more immediate costs in rent 2. That doesn't bridge a multimillion £ hole 3. I'll give you that, the owners might have had to tip a % or 2 less of the millions each year 4. That still costs money because they didn't own anything, if anything that just adds the insurmountable costs the club was faced with. I'm not sure how you think a club having to fund and maintain 2 training bases on separate sides of the world could lead to increased financial viability. I get it, Toronto were cool - they had great branding, a nice logo and it helps deal with the innate insecurity of RL that we're embarrassed about being a predominantly Northern sport. But they were not, nor would they ever have been, financially viable in SL. You'd need NRL levels of funding and still wouldn't be close. For context, Wigan recorded a £1.6M loss despite a turnover of £6.5M in 2023. Wigan Warriors report operating loss of £1.680million in latest accounts Things Wigan have over Toronto include but are not limited to: A training base they own, an asset vs rented facilities in 2 continents Not having to fly their players, officials, coaches and equipment across the Atlantic at least 3-4 times a season for the blocks of fixtures Not having to house their players, officials, coaches in accommodation for a minimum of 13 weeks of the season for home games Not having to fly opposition players, officials, coaches, match officials, RFL staff to Toronto 13 times a year, and house them also Not handing out $5M per annum contracts like the one SBW got There isn't a stadium in Toronto big enough they could sell out every game to make that sustainable with £1.2M in central funding.

I'm not ignoring it, I'm saying it's irrelevant if it can't keep the club afloat. Because it only means something if the club can be there in 5, 10, 50 years' time. Toronto was always on the clock because it's simply impossible to have a self-funding transatlantic club in a fairly minor sporting league and it was only a matter of time before someone got bored of tipping in £2/3/4M+ a year, even if they had been getting a proper cut of the central funding. Thought experiment - let's pretend that post covid, SL welcomed Toronto back with open arms, they retained the squad they had, and the SL teams even agreed to start giving Toronto central funding. They had the most expensive squad in the league with SBW on a reported $10M deal over 2 years and Ricky Leutele on an absolute monster marquee deal too (signed in his prime straight from winning the NRL GF with Cronulla) - they would have had the largest wage bill in 2020 by some margin. They also had a massive financial burden in travel costs, having to rent all their training facilities in the UK, then also having to house 30-odd players and staff for 13 weeks of the season in the heart of Toronto, as well as visiting teams. Do you honestly think that they would still be in SL now, being sustained by just over £1M in central funding? It would be like Wigan or Warrington doing Vegas another 10 times this year.

They drew in huge crowds for a UK RL club with relatively modest outgoings. For a transatlantic venture shipping a whole squad back and forth multiple times a year the crowds were minuscule and a drop in the proverbial ocean where it matters. The whole argument on Toronto getting refused reentry under the terms they were proposing is a fallacy. They were a team requiring £2-3M of owner input per year to keep them running and missed payments had been going on for a long time with players and suppliers. Even if they’d have been let in, even if they were given a fair a share of the central distributions, they would’ve gone pop by now because there’s no one on the planet that would be daft or rich enough to sustain that level of financial drain year on year.

Pretty sure he was, but even if not he’d have been taking up a sizeable chunk of the liabilities in missed wage payments.

I think there were probably greater priorities by the point of the need for a bail out in the midst of Covid shut downs than the RFL picking up SBWs $10M contract

Not to mention their return was on the strict proviso that all other SL clubs became a contracted part of the new guy's multi-level marketing scheme flogging his men's toiletries. People always seem to conveniently leave that part out.