M j M

Nice for Wigan to join the ranks of modern stadia.

Too much public goat sex

Not sure why I'm bothering but anyway... since it's now a live cap compared to when Wigan did it (or didn't do it) it's not possible to have a significant and wholesale breach. The worst you'll get are technical breaches like Wigan's most recent which was about interpretation of minutia. Moreover only someone financially illiterate would look at the ins and outs and go, "yup the ins must be being paid more".

Another tedious example of the preponderence of evidence suggesting one thing but the video ref unable to make the best decision (no try, landed short) because the stupid system has the on-field ref having a say even though he's no idea.

Leeds by 30. It was all in the mind and now they've unburdened themselves and with the steadying hand of Agar on the tiller they will start to pump out results in a late surge for the playoffs. 

I'm sure these two have followed on from each other before? What time do Lamport games kick off?

Is it bad that I looked at the table to work out what it would take for Leeds to sneak into fifth?

It's amazing that so long into his Leeds career this is the first time Myler's been paired with another proper half back. Hopefully it's not too late for him to start playing his own game at Leeds rather than covering for whichever joker we've stuck next to him.

Agar is fine for now. He's not the problem. The squad changes should at least see an increase in quality at his disposal.

Rhyse Martin signed from Canterbury for the rest of this season and the next two. Looks OK but I wonder what impact it has on scope to sign the much dreamed of half back, both in cap and quotas.

The clubs have the power. The clubs vote for what they want in terms of completions, league regulations and minimum standards. And the RFL's annual reports show exactly what sort of financial health it's in. There's so much made up BS on this thread it's unbelievable given how many things which are genuinely challenging that the RFL has to deal with and is struggling to.

The "crisis management" is mostly sorting out messes created at clubs that the governing body has to go in and sort out. In Rugby League the clubs have all the power and most of the money but the governing body is held accountable for everything. Despite the sexy bits of administration having been hived off by club owners with dubious track records. It's almost like the starter of this thread had an agenda ain't it.

Elections have consequences.

YC are going bust because the man who said he'd fund those contracts decided he couldn't honour what he'd agreed. And this time there's no-one interested in spending £1m+ a year to keep them going. That club has only survived in the first place because of Hetherington's administrative genius. He's never really been that interested in it because it's just always been a money pit but I'd say two out of his top five most audacious deals involve finding ways to keep them going. Especially the time he managed to sell the club on Caddick's behalf to Leeds Met then a year later made Leeds Met pay £10m for them to take it back again. That literally kept the club alive for a decade or so.

FWIW I do have concerns about the way Sinfield has handled some of this stuff. Pushing Golding out by refusing to countenance his selection even when we needed a full back was poor as was the handling of Jordan Lilley. Yes these players probably don't/didn't have futures at the club but avoiding the hard conversations just strikes me as weak.

Nobody isn't being paid though.... Someone like Furner will get a pretty handsome settlement. Players being moved on loan will be paid at their Leeds salary levels. Players leaving the club will get new contracts at new clubs which presumably are acceptable to them. And in some cases Leeds might end up paying part of their salaries just to get most of it off the books. The skill with which some of this juggling is being done suggests to me that Hetherington is back taking more direct control of this area.

Any Rovers fans got a view on Lunt since his illness? I don't think anyone's expecting the player Leeds had back in 2012 but is he anywhere near?

Tens of millions. Well not Caddick (not with his rugby league club anyway (yet)) but almost all the others be they oil traders, software entrepreneurs, ambulance chasers or purveyors of patio doors.

I've seen plenty of people running very successful companies that make you wonder, "how did they do it" as they are pretty clueless about lots of things other than the very narrow world of their niche. They do sometimes think that because they've made it in their one field they can do anything though which is the dangerous bit. Now some of the people who own RL clubs - McManus, Caddick, are super smart, others self evidently aren't. But by and large both groups have shown a pretty consistent inability to make money out of RL even when they've said this is their aim. So I'm always very wary of the "successful businessman argument" when it comes to deciding who makes decisions for our sport.

Wigan run at a substantial deficit which Lenagan covers personally. He's rich enough but not THAT rich. He's not a Moran or Coleman or Caddick. I imagine his company takes up lucrative sponsorship space is because they can't find anyone else.

Last season when he was Leeds player of the year? Admittedly not much competition. But you sign players to do certain roles and Myler wasn't signed as controlling half back. Trying to make him fit that role has been painful but it's what Leeds have done when giving the 6 shirt to Moon and Lolohea.

I'm not sure that Lui offers much more than Myler. Both need to run alongside a more controlling half back. Myler's problem has been we've partnered him with a series of jokes from Moon to Tui to Sutcliffe so he's been forced to play a game he's not suited to. Pairing him with Lui should even then be an improvement but the controlling half is still what we need, and have needed since Sinfield retired (a couple of stand out games from McGuire notwithstanding). This at face value isn't going to solve that. It might add enough to help avoid the drop but I'd be surprised (pleasantly) if Myler+Lui was a workable long term solution.

As has been stated on this forum before Leeds gained indicative planning approval for a roof on the Western terrace as part of the stadium masterplan back in 2000. The council have shown themselves unwilling in recent years to go back on things in that plan even if the details change. The problem is the bit which was OK'd for the terrace was so perfunctory as to be almost pointless. An initial, slightly larger, submission was rejected because of the impact on the gardens behind.

Apart from being in fundamentally the wrong part of the city Elland Road's uncomfortable seats and pretty poor matchday experience are key reasons why I don't want Leeds to ever play any more games there.

The only slightly interesting point in this thread is that Leeds don't send seating tickets to away clubs. With, currently, surplus seating capacity in the north stand I don't understand why a batch of tickets at the western end of that stand weren't sent to Wigan, I'm sure there would be some takers.