Halifax - the forgotten club?

[Tommygilf]

17 hours ago, Bulls2487 said:

Interesting to see Halifax owe Calderdale Council almost a year's unpaid rent.

I believe the figure is around 50k

https://www.whatdotheyknow.com/request/the_shay_stadium_5#incoming-2651103

Its really poor that a club like Halifax aren't paying a sum like that - it demonstrates the massive gulf between the operating level of clubs at their level and the full time game...

[sentoffagain2]

39 minutes ago, Tommygilf said:

Its really poor that a club like Halifax aren't paying a sum like that - it demonstrates the massive gulf between the operating level of clubs at their level and the full time game...

  Minimum of about £3million in income between Championship sides and SL.Clubs can't afford to pay more than 70% of income in wages if they do other areas in the club will suffer.

[Tommygilf]

14 minutes ago, sentoffagain2 said:

  Minimum of about £3million in income between Championship sides and SL.Clubs can't afford to pay more than 70% of income in wages if they do other areas in the club will suffer.

Absolutely, it just shows how big the differences are though.

[Hopping Mad]

18 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Its really poor that a club like Halifax aren't paying a sum like that - it demonstrates the massive gulf between the operating level of clubs at their level and the full time game...

No wonder so many FC Halifax Town supporters who, going back to the Thrum Hall days, used also to watch the rugby league club, now refuse to set foot in the Shay when fellow tenants Fax are playing.

Edited May 11 by Hopping Mad

[Hopping Mad]

23 hours ago, The Blues Ox said:

53k and looks like the new board took over and simply decided to stop paying the rent. What a shambles. At least they got to wear their brand new suits at Wembley while all the time the club was going down the pan. Might explain the state of our squad for this season and why players keep asking to leave.

Halifax, the forgotten club - who cannot remember to pay their rent. Calderdale Council should kick (or lock) them out of the Shay. I take it, then, when the council offloads (albeit, most likely, to a third party) the loss-making Shay, Halifax aren't seriously thinking about running it, with FC Halifax Town as secondary partners. Mind-boggling! The football club would be foolish to enter into any sort of Shay-operating partnership with Halifax.

Edited May 11 by Hopping Mad

[The Blues Ox]

1 hour ago, Hopping Mad said:

Halifax, the forgotten club - who cannot remember to pay their rent. Calderdale Council should kick (or lock) them out of the Shay. I take it, then, when the council offloads (albeit, most likely, to a third party) the loss-making Shay, Halifax aren't seriously thinking about running it, with FC Halifax Town as secondary partners. Mind-boggling! The football club would be foolish to enter into any sort of Shay-operating partnership with Halifax.

Im confused by what you are saying. If the council offload the Shay to a 3rd party(There are no other interested parties BTW) then neither team would be running the stadium. Again if its a 3rd party running it the both of the clubs would be working in partnership with that 3rd party rather than each other. 

I can't see anyone buying the Shay, you have nearly a 1m outlay just to get the pitch so it is fit for purpose and the reality is that the 2 clubs combined only bring just over a couple of thousand fans in each week. There is more a chance that the longterm outcome will be the land is sold and both teams make alternative arrangements as to where they play.

[Hopping Mad]

14 minutes ago, The Blues Ox said:

Im confused by what you are saying. If the council offload the Shay to a 3rd party(There are no other interested parties BTW) then neither team would be running the stadium. Again if its a 3rd party running it the both of the clubs would be working in partnership with that 3rd party rather than each other. 

I can't see anyone buying the Shay, you have nearly a 1m outlay just to get the pitch so it is fit for purpose and the reality is that the 2 clubs combined only bring just over a couple of thousand fans in each week. There is more a chance that the longterm outcome will be the land is sold and both teams make alternative arrangements as to where they play.

I say that only because one or both of the clubs taking over the running of the Shay is supposed to be one of the council's options.

Most likely, the white elephant (the defunct speedway club's former logo!) Shay will become housing (Halifax probably has sufficient supermarkets and retail park-style facilities now). Why would any third party purchaser, in their right mind, want to continue to use it as a sports stadium, with two skint sitting tenants? Goodness knows, though, given Calderdale's unhelpful topography, where either the football or the rugby league club would end up playing. Maybe time to revive that Halifax-Huddersfield merger.

Edited May 11 by Hopping Mad

[Ovenden Grunt]

11 minutes ago, Hopping Mad said:

I say that only because one or both of the clubs taking over the running of the Shay is supposed to be one of the council's options.

Most likely, the white elephant (the defunct speedway club's former logo!) Shay will become housing (Halifax probably has sufficient supermarkets and retail park-style facilities now). Why would any third party purchaser, in their right mind, want to continue to use it as a sports stadium, with two skint sitting tenants? Goodness knows, though, given Calderdale's unhelpful topography, where either the football or the rugby league club would end up playing. Maybe time to revive that Halifax-Huddersfield merger.

A bit like the shuddersfield one?

[The Blues Ox]

1 hour ago, Hopping Mad said:

I say that only because one or both of the clubs taking over the running of the Shay is supposed to be one of the council's options.

Most likely, the white elephant (the defunct speedway club's former logo!) Shay will become housing (Halifax probably has sufficient supermarkets and retail park-style facilities now). Why would any third party purchaser, in their right mind, want to continue to use it as a sports stadium, with two skint sitting tenants? Goodness knows, though, given Calderdale's unhelpful topography, where either the football or the rugby league club would end up playing. Maybe time to revive that Halifax-Huddersfield merger.

Well a million pound would go a long way at this point.  ShuddersFax. 

[The Phantom Horseman]

20 hours ago, Tommygilf said:

Absolutely, it just shows how big the differences are though.

Most notably, in central funding.

There really hasn't been enough made about the relative drop in funding for lower-league clubs in comparison with SL clubs in recent years.

It's not easy to get accurate figures for how much the distribution is at each level as the figures don't seem to be published very often, but from the limited information I have seen it seems like over the last few years SL clubs probably receive about 70% of what they did, say, five or six years ago, whereas high-end Championship teams are at around 20% (and League 1 teams I believe received just £20k).

In my opinion, that's why we're seeing a gradual drop in quality in the Championship and why, other than teams with a vastly wealthy owner, there is little prospect of most Championship teams progressing sufficiently to become SL aspirants under the new IMG system, with things like attendances, sponsorship  and merchandise sales inevitably falling as the quality on the pitch is reduced.

Edited May 11 by The Phantom Horseman

[Ovenden Grunt]

1 hour ago, The Blues Ox said:

Well a million pound would go a long way at this point.  ShuddersFax. 

Halifield if we must!

[Ovenden Grunt]

40 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

Most notably, in central funding.

There really hasn't been enough made about the relative drop in funding for lower-league clubs in comparison with SL clubs in recent years.

It's not easy to get accurate figures for how much the distribution is at each level as the figures don't seem to be published very often, but from the limited information I have seen it seems like over the last few years SL clubs probably receive about 70% of what they did, say, five or six years ago, whereas high-end Championship teams are at around 20% (and League 1 teams I believe received just £20k).

In my opinion, that's why we're seeing a gradual drop in quality in the Championship and why, other than teams with a vastly wealthy owner, there is little prospect of most Championship teams progressing sufficiently to become SL aspirants udner the new IMG system, with things like attendances, sponsorship  and merchandise sales inevitably falling as the quality on the pitch is reduced.

...and that, TPH, is exactly the plan in a nutshell. %️

[Gooleboy]

2 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

I say that only because one or both of the clubs taking over the running of the Shay is supposed to be one of the council's options.

Most likely, the white elephant (the defunct speedway club's former logo!) Shay will become housing (Halifax probably has sufficient supermarkets and retail park-style facilities now). Why would any third party purchaser, in their right mind, want to continue to use it as a sports stadium, with two skint sitting tenants? Goodness knows, though, given Calderdale's unhelpful topography, where either the football or the rugby league club would end up playing. Maybe time to revive that Halifax-Huddersfield merger.

Mergers. Now there's an idea worth discussing!

[gingerjon]

1 hour ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

Most notably, in central funding.

There really hasn't been enough made about the relative drop in funding for lower-league clubs in comparison with SL clubs in recent years.

It's not easy to get accurate figures for how much the distribution is at each level as the figures don't seem to be published very often, but from the limited information I have seen it seems like over the last few years SL clubs probably receive about 70% of what they did, say, five or six years ago, whereas high-end Championship teams are at around 20% (and League 1 teams I believe received just £20k).

In my opinion, that's why we're seeing a gradual drop in quality in the Championship and why, other than teams with a vastly wealthy owner, there is little prospect of most Championship teams progressing sufficiently to become SL aspirants under the new IMG system, with things like attendances, sponsorship  and merchandise sales inevitably falling as the quality on the pitch is reduced.

I believe a key reason the Championship distribution is kept secret is because, unlike Super League and League 1, it is not an even distribution.

[The Phantom Horseman]

19 minutes ago, gingerjon said:

I believe a key reason the Championship distribution is kept secret is because, unlike Super League and League 1, it is not an even distribution.

That's been the case for some time though. At one point it was massively lopsided (in an attempt to help the higher-finishing clubs to bridge the gap and compete with SL teams in the Middle 8s). Then a few years ago it was announced that they were drastically reducing the differential (from what I remember, it was something like £5k increments per positional finish). I also seem to remember something about payments being linked to turnover or something like that?

But I doubt it's being "kept secret" for those reasons - it has historically always been very difficult to find out what the distributions were, whatever the methodology.

[gingerjon]

2 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

That's been the case for some time though. At one point it was massively lopsided (in an attempt to help the higher-finishing clubs to bridge the gap and compete with SL teams in the Middle 8s). Then a few years ago it was announced that they were drastically reducing the differential (from what I remember, it was something like £5k increments per positional finish). I also seem to remember something about payments being linked to turnover or something like that?

But I doubt it's being "kept secret" for those reasons - it has historically always been very difficult to find out what the distributions were, whatever the methodology.

Kept secret probably made it sound worse than it was. We don't officially release a lot of stuff that other sports do. I can easily find out how much teams get for league positions and cup performances in soccer, for example, and RL used to be as clear, but now is not.

[Blind side johnny]

16 minutes ago, The Phantom Horseman said:

That's been the case for some time though. At one point it was massively lopsided (in an attempt to help the higher-finishing clubs to bridge the gap and compete with SL teams in the Middle 8s). Then a few years ago it was announced that they were drastically reducing the differential (from what I remember, it was something like £5k increments per positional finish). I also seem to remember something about payments being linked to turnover or something like that?

But I doubt it's being "kept secret" for those reasons - it has historically always been very difficult to find out what the distributions were, whatever the methodology.

Even the clubs themselves had no real idea until just before the season began and, even worse, will have no real figures for 2025 either. Sugar-daddy clubs and SL ones have the major upper hand under such arrangements. And, before folk start castigating IMG (justified in other areas) this has been mishandled by the RFL for years.

[M j M]

10 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

No wonder so many FC Halifax Town supporters who, going back to the Thrum Hall days, used also to watch the rugby league club, now refuse to set foot in the Shay when fellow tenants Fax are playing.

Halifax Town hardly have a virtuous financial record.

[Phil]

14 hours ago, Hopping Mad said:

Halifax, the forgotten club - who cannot remember to pay their rent. Calderdale Council should kick (or lock) them out of the Shay. I take it, then, when the council offloads (albeit, most likely, to a third party) the loss-making Shay, Halifax aren't seriously thinking about running it, with FC Halifax Town as secondary partners. Mind-boggling! The football club would be foolish to enter into any sort of Shay-operating partnership with Halifax.

Outside of the playing and coaching staff the soccer club have only two employees.

They have no retail outlet and have only four items of merchandise available on their website.

The supporters group “Shaymen down south” raised £5k for the club to fit out a vacant retail unit at the ground, the club informed them they weren’t interested.

The club chairman hasn’t been seen at a match for months and is on record as saying that if the club is promoted he will walk away as he has neither the inclination nor the ability to fund the club any longer.

All is not well in the world of FC Halifax Town either.

Edited May 11 by Phil