Seems to have gone pretty quiet at Salford compared to the conveyor belt of reports earlier last week, I wonder if the meeting reported to have taken place on Friday afternoon was a successful one for them.

Super league clubs owners meeting tomorrow to decide on whether they have secured outside monies and if not how they save the £700000.

Just a personal view. But I think Salford will release a few players but not the amount what's been reported. All we be revealed I guess this week

we need to do something positive here if the dispensation is true
Salford have three of the best centres in S/l and we dont have one decent one

For me, McDonald and Sneyd are for clubs desperate to win silverware this season. Short term solution and don’t really benefit the future at all.

Players like Stone, Lewis and Cross are players we should be looking at. Realistically could get at least 3 years out of each of them and probably haven’t even his their peak yet.

We need to plan to be challenging consistently for silverware from 2027 instead of throwing a ton of money at players who may help us finish 7/8/9th instead of 10th

what about Marsters? same age as Cross
I agree looking at Sneyd is blinkered and a waste of time

I do feel a bit uneasy about clubs getting quota dispensation for players, as much as I'd like us to get a MacDonald, Lewis or even Shane Wright.

Sneyd, while it's a short term signing is probably the best we could hope for right now, I doubt any other club will release a first choice English half on the eve of the season. I do have concerns IF he does sign how it'd work with Sezer.

Ive been thinking about this so I'm afraid its diatribe time.


You see I guess a lot of fans at a lot of clubs are talking about grabbing players and denuding Salford of the greatest assets but in the end will that really be good for the game? the vultures are circling!!

I guess that's something that some even handed folks on here who care about the game will be musing over and wrestling with a little. Many will say well they shouldn't have engaged those players knowing that there was a good chance of them not being able to pay them in the long term.

On the one hand is it good for the optics as far as the sport is concerned if 11 of the twelve clubs predate one that is struggling and leave them hobbling along at the foot of the table all season. What chance do they then have of attracting a backer? It was bad enough when we were crap last season to see what it looked like to outsiders watching our sport. It will just devalue our competition further.

On the other hand its one thing promising fans jam tomorrow but what business in its right mind operates and buys assets and brings in workers on the basis of boardroom jam tomorrow, when it knows that possibly in a couple of month it won't be able to pay their wages, without a hand out and in addition, then borrows money against their future income just to keep going with the same level of outgoings, knowing full well they MAY not be able to recoup that money as the season progresses. As a club they basically took a gamble but they are just living a three quarters of a million pounds a year above their means.

Yeh, They could find a sugar daddy or investors from Australia to fish em out, but they've been looking long enough! Rather like Huddersfield they moved ground from their heartland stadium in central Salford in the heart of a strong community expecting the fans to follow to a new stadium that was in essence in a field next to the motorway miles away. So, of course a lot just didn't follow. At that point they needed to review their business model, but they waded on and in the end having had a sugar daddy promising the earth and departing when it didn't come gift wrapped, he then left the club to be run by the fans. A community club Wow how we all liked that idea and how bloody unpractical it was! Yes they have been a good team of late but hey have done it obviously living above their means.

Top sporting entrepreneurs have observed of late that without a rich owner our clubs and indeed our fully professional sport just cannot survive on static or even falling gates and plummeting TV revenues. It's worrying, Cas, Wakey and Us have only just survived by being bought out by rich owners but how long will they and others at other clubs stand for losing money hand over fist year in year out?? Have you seen the financial deficits at just about every club in the game.? One day the rot will start and Salford might be the club that tips the scales and see the game going backwards fast. Even if they survive and get fished out too, I can't see it being long before the sheer economics of money coming in falling far short of money going out can continue at most of the clubs, can You? For me the prospect of going back to a semi professional game again is certainly just over the current horizon. The game is simply living way above its means and the whole game is like Salford waiting for something to come riding over the horizon to save it. Who will do it, well it might be the NRL but I'm afraid it won't be the RFL or IMG.

It will therefore for me be interesting to see what happens at Salford, if they gat a last minute reprise and what the clubs do about them if they don't. I feel for their fans, but is it change, be radicle or disappear or will we see yet another sticking plaster on the inner tube of British rugby league an inner tube that is perishing fast?

Unless some more revenue comes into the game, it needs a financial readjustment in this country and some common sense.

It's OK having massive losses covered y rich owners but at some point the game needs to get close to wiping it's face or it will simply wither and die.

I know that players put their bodies on the line each week but there isn't the money to pay them what they currently earn and if that means some of the better ones go off to Australia then so be it, but if clubs carry on as they are I suspect rugby league was we know it in this country will be back to a part time northern sport in a decade or two

Rovers obviously see Macdonald as a big upgrade on Evalds at fullback but want quota and cap dispensation to make it work. Even if Salford don’t get any short term investment (I think they might anyway with these Aussies ) I’m not sure the other clubs will just let Rovers have it, especially the likes of Hull and Leigh who would argue that we have cap space already to take players and the likes of Wigan, Saints and Wire especially might just see it as only working to strengthen a rival in Rovers if they’re not desperate for any Salford players themselves.

He’s a top player but I agree with one of the posters above I’d just stick to our target of Cross as safer longer term option. It’s a gamble that Rovers might want to take because it might be the difference of a trophy for them this season but we’re not at the level and Macdonald would mean a lot of wriggling around cap and quota when any potential dispensation ended in 2026. Cross on a three year deal would be a good signing, he’d add that pace to the centres that we lack, fits within our cap and non quota and maybe Salford would be willing to do a deal anyway if it helped them keep the bigger stars.

Sneyd I’d think would be the last player they’d want to lose. From our end I’d like it to happen and think a Sneyd and Sezer would work well but if it was a straight shoot out I think the Leigh move would be his choice. Like I said a few days ago though think the reports of the ‘Salford fire sale’ are coming from a journalist with a well placed source at one club, might not be representative of what the whole league wants anyway. I suppose we’ll likely find out later when they meet.