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Widnes problems


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10 minutes ago, londonbronco said:

Very tough but if the Broncos can survive 4 years in the Championship so can Widnes.  Does anyone know where their £500K parachute payment went, and so quickly assuming it was paid to the club?

It gets paid in instalments like all central funding. So it’s not all gone (yet)

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14 minutes ago, londonbronco said:

Very tough but if the Broncos can survive 4 years in the Championship so can Widnes.

London moved to a tiny stadium, cut everything to the bone, and still relied on a single rich man to keep things going.

I'm glad we did and that we survived and grew.

But it's not a model I'd recommend.

Build a man a fire, and he'll be warm for a day. Set a man on fire, and he'll be warm for the rest of his life. (Terry Pratchett)

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We have to be critical of the Widnes management here. When Widnes lost their Super League place all players contracts became null and void. Widnes knew exactly how much central funding/parachute payments they would be receiving each month. They have then gone on to negotiate and agree to contracts they can’t afford. They can only blame themselves for doing that.

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They knew they were going down and should plan accordingley

It's almost as if half of superleague (our flagship competition full of supposedly "big" clubs) survive purely on the central funding given out from the sky deal.

Nearly every team that gets relegated goes bust now.

And clubs like Batley, Dewsbury and many others outside SL crack on year in year out living on peanuts.........i know teams outside SL work on much smaller budgets for players but when SL contracts are voided on relegation businesses should be a little more prepared than this.

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10 minutes ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

We have to be critical of the Widnes management here. When Widnes lost their Super League place all players contracts became null and void. Widnes knew exactly how much central funding/parachute payments they would be receiving each month. They have then gone on to negotiate and agree to contracts they can’t afford. They can only blame themselves for doing that.

Exactly

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5 minutes ago, Bring back GB said:

 Can never understand the points deduction thing 

Stops clubs using the system to write off a load of debt, retain players and go about their business as a newco with no effect on their league position.

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The problem is there are too many clubs in the game who have no assets, except players who are basically worthless in this day and age and an over reliance on sky funding and rich owners which basically make clubs unsustainable. 

I feel sorry for the fans because it’s not their fault but they are not the only club in this situation and that’s why relegation is such an issue because there is no foundation to rebuild on.

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1 hour ago, Dave T said:

Isn't the main issue here the fact that an investor has backed out, leaving a black hole in funding?

That can, and does happen in any sport, in any structure, in any country.

In this case it seems that the issue is that a potential investor has backed out, rather than somebody pulling existing investment out of the club

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1 hour ago, Sir Kevin Sinfield said:

We have to be critical of the Widnes management here. When Widnes lost their Super League place all players contracts became null and void. Widnes knew exactly how much central funding/parachute payments they would be receiving each month. They have then gone on to negotiate and agree to contracts they can’t afford. They can only blame themselves for doing that.

This is the same situation to Leigh, and their chairman claimed that parachute payments could only be spent on players.  If so, then even if they cut their players wages then the parachute payments are not much help for anything else.  

But if the council had insisted on its payments then the issue would have been forced earlier.    It's hard to see where Widnes go if they do not have any assets.  

 

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1 hour ago, tuutaisrambo said:

"They knew they were going down and should plan accordingley"

...

"Nearly every team that gets relegated goes bust now."

...

They did not know they were going down.    They started the 8s with a clean sheet, indeed they could easily buy a couple of players at the death to try to stay up (did they?).   This is how Salford managed to stay up.

Maybe with 3 games to go they could argue they were 100% gone, but basically thanks to the 8s they were still in with a good chance to stay up with still a third of the season to go.

The 8s were a disaster.  As of course anyway is relegation. 

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1 hour ago, Dave T said:

Isn't the main issue here the fact that an investor has backed out, leaving a black hole in funding?

That can, and does happen in any sport, in any structure, in any country.

We don't need the likes of you bringing balance to this! Bog off!!

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6 hours ago, Rupert Prince said:

This is the same situation to Leigh, and their chairman claimed that parachute payments could only be spent on players.  If so, then even if they cut their players wages then the parachute payments are not much help for anything else.  

 But if the council had insisted on its payments then the issue would have been forced earlier.    It's hard to see where Widnes go if they do not have any assets.  

 

There might've been the same circumstances with parachute payments, but I think the Widnes and Leigh situations are very different. At Leigh, most if not all fans didn't like how DB dealt with the situation at the end of last season, and a high number would argue that it was avoidable. But, every fan could understand that there was a clear catalyst for the issues at the end of last season. Failure to make the top four and subsequent drop in income. Doesn't make it acceptable, but at least you can understand what the trigger was.

Widnes appear to be on the brink of administration within a month of the season starting, having renegotiated all player contracts in the close season. What was going through the heads of people budgeting for this year? Widnes fans deserve much much better.

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1 hour ago, phiggins said:

There might've been the same circumstances with parachute payments, but I think the Widnes and Leigh situations are very different. At Leigh, most if not all fans didn't like how DB dealt with the situation at the end of last season, and a high number would argue that it was avoidable. But, every fan could understand that there was a clear catalyst for the issues at the end of last season. Failure to make the top four and subsequent drop in income. Doesn't make it acceptable, but at least you can understand what the trigger was.

Widnes appear to be on the brink of administration of administration within a month of the season starting, having renegotiated all player contracts in the close season. What was going through the heads of people budgeting for this year? Widnes fans deserve much much better.

I am sure DB could have put Leigh into administration and was possibly advised to, but he managed to off load around 9 very large contracts as players were allowed to seek alternative clubs just prior to the deadline and agreed deals with the majority that remained until the end of the season.  It wasn't pleasant and did look ugly but in hindsight it did save the club whether people agreed with the way it was done or not.  It also avoided any local suppliers getting screwed as far as I know and started 2019 as a part time club, ready to climb again.  TBH there isn't much point in spending excessive amounts of cash this year. Just let Toronto get on with it.  

Here we go again .....

 

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Makes you wonder why they kept Gelling on his £120k+ contract when they knew they could offload him to Catalan in Jan?

Leigh made it through the season spending 1.6 million when relegated and only cleared the decks when missing out on the top 4, for Widnes to do this 3 rounds in with all board members & CEO jumping ship recently means they knew this was on the cards.

Be interesting to see how this plays out.

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3 hours ago, Rupert Prince said:

They did not know they were going down.    They started the 8s with a clean sheet, indeed they could easily buy a couple of players at the death to try to stay up (did they?).   This is how Salford managed to stay up.

Maybe with 3 games to go they could argue they were 100% gone, but basically thanks to the 8s they were still in with a good chance to stay up with still a third of the season to go.

The 8s were a disaster.  As of course anyway is relegation. 

They knew they had a very high risk of going down.......... we can't blame any structure or relegation for clubs running their business poorly.

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18 hours ago, Toby Chopra said:

Yes, seen the statement now. Looks like they've budgeted based on money they were promised which never appeared. 

They're not the first club to make financial commitments based on an investor promise but nothing concrete. We really are going to need some sort of rule to stop this happening. It's an unnecessary crisis. A club of Widnes size should never be bankrupt, even after relegation. 

How can you have rule "to stop this happening". Surely it is the responsibility of the clubs financial directors and the banks, to investigate and verify the strength and intentions of prospective investors.

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