After reading Press Releases from Whitehaven,Barrow,Keighley regarding their Financial
problems this shows what a parlous situation the game is in.

Yes indeed. And to add to that the SL clubs would like to take more money away from those in the lower divisions. I’m starting to see a league built on sand, do these f*ckwits not get it that we need a solid base and the whole game needs supporting properly.

Whoever misses out on the top 4 out of Leigh, Fax and Fev could easily find themselves in a similar position as well. A small club trying to find a 150-200k deficit to cover contracts that are probably already in place is just not going to happen without major changes. I fear for our club if we miss out.

I think our club has learnt its lessons a few times before and do not see this happening again, most contracts for incoming recently have been until end of season with a view to retention next year. A few more games and we will probably see some of these people signed up and existing players retained. The players have a great rapport and spirit. Can’t see many players wanting elsewhere except maybe tangata, Fleming.

My fears exactly. I remember Richard Marshall telling the League Express last year that Fax would be in a bad place if Fax didn't qualify for the top 4. It's a real catch 22 situation. To get the players to challenge for the top 4 you have to budget with top 4 "prize" money. So what can you do?

It does make you wonder how on earth the sport survived before all this SKY money. I suppose in the old days players were generally paid only for appearances which saved a fortune in wages. Hey, didn't Fax pay Les Holliday £600 for a win (zero for a lose) who reputedly claimed he was injured for a trip to Hull which we had no chance of winning?

It’s the stupidity of Boards attempting to reach for a dream based upon fans unrealistic expectations. We have seen with Widnes, Leigh and Salford that someone with money helps, but has to be year after year unless you get good gates. Only Huddersfield have had someone pay out huge amounts for many years with very mixed results.

The present power struggle is a recognition of the future reduction of Sky money, with less money there will be less to pay wages, if clubs carrying on paying what they do there will be many more in desperate trouble. So we will see a further consolidation of best players to fewer clubs.

Fax need to recognise this, and if they make the top four use a chunk of the cash to put cash in the bank, not chase the unrealistic stupidity of a Super League dream.

It all makes you wonder if the successful model for RL has to be a type of supporters conglomerate with directors just being effective managers of a business and not the source of funds. To some extent we have the embryo of that with the fax trust this year and with , LS 28. I dare say fax in 2115/was in a similar financial position after blowing all the 790k of winnings only not to get top 4 the next season and then have to negotiate wage cuts. At least we now have another funding stream in the shop which the past directors allowed with heads firmly in the sand make exactly nothing for 5 years.in fact it cost the club being invoiced by the shop. So the answer is that everyone probably needs to contribute to their own club however small that contribution as a way for the clubs having a sustainable future. I personally in the event of financial woe would advocate a small nominal annual subscription to be a member of the club ie £20 paid in Nov which could be used as a recruitment pot .....have the total running like a blue peter chart shown on the Twitteraccount ie almost crowd funding

You seem to have good insight in to the shop dealings so you can probably explain to anyone on here who struggles with the business side of things how a club makes money by selling this seasons products off at pretty much cost price and also why they would do that. Obviously having nobody to stump up a lump sum of cash up front has meant that the club had to use a poor quality supplier which probably has not helped sales but its not like the goods will be sale or return. I wonder how much the shop will "make" the club this year?

More folk watched the game in the past.

Nowadays, there is a lot more leisure options.

Exactly and it costs a fortune to watch when you try and take the family as well. people simply can't afford to spend that sort of money. Even when you give tickets away like we did last week we still only managed pretty much our usual crowd through the gates.

This weeks press reported one suggestion for 2019 was that funding for the Championship would be divided equally between the clubs regardless of where they finished on the table if Super League’s proposals for the new league structure are accepted.
The figures quoted were an equal split of £3.775 million equating to £314,583 per year per club.
Ian Lenegan was quoted as saying “It is not surprising to see some of these higher clubs being publicly unhappy with any talk of change within the Championship funding”
“There is no issue or complaint within Super League or Championship 1 where all the clubs receive the same basic distribution.”
“The talk has only been about the Championship clubs, where a view could be taken that the total amount received is higher than in most other sports and that it is then distributed unfairly in favour of the top four clubs.”

Well what I would say Mr Lenegan is that what upset the vast majority fully across the sport was the fact that you and others took it upon yourselves to call a meeting and make public comments about the changes to the game as if they were already agreed upon by all involved when this clearly was not the case.

Furthermore your comments rather than being based on concern for the clubs who finish outside the top 4 of the Championship has more to do with eventually grabbing more for yourself and reducing the threat that these top 4 Championship clubs now pose to some of your current SL buddies, eg: reduce the funding reduce the threat which you never thought they could possibly pose.

These clubs have far exceeded expectation and in spite of the game being on it’s knees all you can think of doing is cutting it’s legs off even more.
End of rant.

Isn’t that the point though and the situation we are in. To run the club you need income,fans through the gate, you have to charge an entrance fee £17 £18 £19 £20, to make money to pay higher level
Players, they come in better winning success more fans and so the cycle goes on. But that sort of money can be expensive with a family of 4,5 etc. But the club can not charge less because you can’t attracted the better players as you don’t have the finance. Plus there is the day to day running of the club, up keep of the growing or rent paying the full time staff who run the office and more besides.
It is a relentless pressure finding funds and I realy don’t think there is a major soloution. If there was every club would be OK. The least we can do is keep attending the games or buy a season ticket, buy some merchandise if you can and put a £1 or so in the collection buckets at home games.
After we moved from Thrum Hall it was meant to sort our finances out but it went down hill (so I blame the fat controller). Nothing is easy but I have faith in our new board members we seem to gathering a larger commercial/sponsorship portfolio including companies who are not in the local area and RMs reserve grade is starting to bare fruit. I don’t know the ins and outs of HRLFC but from where I sit as a supporter we seem to be at a good place at the moment. Things feel possative. Someone may put me right but I feel we are moving in the right direction.

Everybody wants a team in the town. Nobody wants to pay for it.

The admission fee to a match never used to be an issue, it used to be small change. But there was a spell of several years where the fee kept being bumped up a quid every year which in monetary terms didn't seem alot but in percentage terms it was. Even a quid increase on today's £19 is an inflation busting 5%.

So a huge hole has been dug where sporting clubs are gradually pricing themselves out of the entertainment market (even empty seats are starting to appear at premiership soccer matches). It's a huge ask to expect new fans to pay £19 when there's so many cheaper alternatives, so the only way to stop the rot is to drastically reduce the entrance fee and unfortunately ask the players to take a lot less money, but hopefully the resultant increased gates will bring about some compensation. Can't do this unilaterally of course, has to be across the board which I know won't happen.

A sorry state of affairs but you can see the writing on the wall. I'm sure I'm not the only one who turns up at the Shay and glances round at the ground before kick off despairing at the sp areas in the South Stand and the empty seats in the East Stand, Not to mention the empty North Stand and Skircoat Stand (that might as well be knocked down and replace by an ozzie tpe grassy knoll). The whole of Rugby League appears to be sleep walking into eventual oblivion.

Unfortunately, standards go up - pushed up by government, councils, health and safety regs and the like.

Clubs have to contribute to players' pensions these days. There's VAT on admissions so your £20 a head is actually only £16.67. There are more doctors and physios. I'm not against all this, apart from the VAT, obviously, but it's a different landscape to 50 years ago.