One thing that has happened with the clubs and players is the following scenario.

You have a player who stands out so club A offer X amount to sign him.

Club B also want him so offer XX amount club A counter bid XXX etc etc.

Another player comes along of a similar quality and the bar has been raised higher by the precedent set by the player A deal so his agent says he wants the same and the bidding starts again.

You only need 1 club with any ambitions and a bit of money to set it off and you only need 2 clubs for the price to be bumped up and then in varying degrees the rest are forced to follow in an attempt not to be the whipping boys club.

Everyone ends up spending more for the same batch of players playing at the same standard that either stay where they are or just move around from club to club with the better ones going to the highest bidder but with all the rest getting paid more to do it and the clubs putting up the prices to try and pay for it.

Its hard to know what the answer is especially with everything that is going on with the Shay. Even as a base figure season tickets hardly cover the cost of the rent on the stadium and a couple of the top earners salaries and thats before the rest of the squad and staff. There is no doubt the rent on the stadium is very reasonable but in the grand scheme of things we simply can not afford it along with running a competitive squad. Ive often thought that lowering prices might be an option but when it has been done in the past it has not shown a significant increase on the gate which must make it hard for the club to justify doing it. The problem is paying over £20+ entrance fee is disproportionate to the standard of rugby on offer.

That's why there needs to be a strict LOW salary cap to stop this player gazumping. I'm still waiting for 4 championship clubs to release their 2023 results, but if we exclude French club Toulouse and SL bound Wakey, and include relegation bound London, of the 9 clubs so far only Batley and Swinton are solvent - Batley because they own their ground and Swinton's balance sheet is helped by some useless goodwill and they tapped Salford Council for some money after the year end.

As for players being"poorer" ..... are they actually "poor"? It's their choice to play RL, if they don't like the money then do something else. As for "richer" players giving more entertainment ....... watching the Wakey v York game on the sportsmen it was far more entertaining than full time Hull v Salford and York's efforts put Hull's to shame.

I've no idea where we're going from here. We'll just plod along and I see a big dip in season ticket sales after the recent drama, with the floating fans choosing their games more and more, Not just Fax, but all the clubs. I foresee Fev being the next championship club to plead poverty, and as I've said before Batley selling their ground to survive. The sport is in its biggest mess in its history.

There's no way new fans will be attracted at £20, not a chance. There have been several occasions in the pub after a match when I've been asked by an "interested" rugby non-attending fan how much it costs to get in nowadays and my "20 quid" reply is greeted by "HOW MUCH????" and to be honest I'm fairly embarrassed by it, especially when I've watched some really drab games wanting to leave before the end.

But if the clubs think lowering the admission is simply not affordable then so be it, but the current option will also eventually be unaffordable as the fan base will gradually diminish over time anyway.

At championship level your standard mainstay squad player has a trade as his primary job - earning him somewhere around £30k +/-
He then plays part-time RL for an additional £10-£15k per year.
And that is it. You can build a 22 man squad for about £250k from that premise. And RL is a simple enough game that it will be competitive.

The younger ones who have come through an academy without being picked up will dream of playing well enough to "make it" and be offered £50k to go full time with an SL club.
The older ones will be happy to build their job up as the priority and look for a decent part-time club to earn enough for all the family extras that make a difference when cost of living is so high.

Is this pool of players getting smaller? Is it wage growth due to inflation? Putting their bodies on the line does have a risk towards their main job so they will want to maximize their part-time earnings. The championship clubs have just had their central funding axed and the fans are feeling the pinch as well.

[i[Part quoteAt championship level your standard mainstay squad player has a trade as his primary job - earning him somewhere around £30k +/-
He then plays part-time RL for an additional £10-£15k per year.
And that is it. You can build a 22 man squad for about £250k from that premise. And RL is a simple enough game that it will be competitive." End.
[/i
Not having a go and a serious question.
When has Bradford's playing budget past and present ever fitted into the financial figures mentioned above.
How much was Dec Patton on, how much did it cost to get Gaskell to sign, how much is Joe Keyes going to be paid.
How many other players are being paid between £10-£15 k per year and what is the likely hood of that ever happening?
It's all too deeply rooted and too far gone and now events are catching up and it's difficult to know what or if there is an answer.

Maybe if enough go bust and enough of them still have the desire they rise from the ashes and form a division that's based on the lower wages / entrance fees that have been mentioned.

Those 3 you mentioned are all halves. Usually a premium on them.

A specific example is recently Thomas Doyle - Bradford offered him £25k to stay but Keighley went for £30k. He had fulltime offer from Leigh in the £45k range which didn't compensate for his job so he stayed part-time.
I'm a Bradford fan, and I can see the issues. Bradford have options for jobs for players - in the foundation, in the academy. Whilst the academy costs low 6 figures, it does provide alternative sponsorship & funding streams. And the 3 newest directors (excluding Wood) do seem to be prepared to fund various areas for IMG points but also the performance side on the pitch.
I would say currently in Bradfords squad - Arundel, Hallas, Davies, Smith, Baldwinson, Butler are all the older type of player who have either been in SL or have no desire for SL and will take a decent part-time wage.
Scurr, Myers, Jowitt, Peposhi are all the second type of player, still trying to prove to an SL club they are worth a shot.
The elephant in the room (which I understand) is that Bradford have signed at least 6 overseas/Aussie players who won't have come over for that kind of wage. They'll have to be on more, possibly split with the foundation.

I had thought of the overseas players but wanted to keep it short and with that it mind the short answer is none of them standard players who play regular first team are on 10-15k and the 25k to 30k bidding scenario is exactly what I was referring to often with much higher amounts involved.

I'll resist the temptation to say who the elephant in the room is but Nigel Wood in this weeks rugby league press says on Bradford's turn over ( income / spending )
that it had increased form £1,715,762 in 2022 to £2,131,351 in 2023 turning a £270,288 a loss into a £21,288 profit for the same period which although it will cover all aspects of running a club still dwarfs and is over 10 times the £250k amount mentioned to be able to run a rugby club on.

Also worth mentioning Bradford are still in the Championship and if and when they do get into SL those figures will no doubt get much bigger.

The biggest problem Fax have at the moment is keeping hold of existing fans nevermind attracting new ones. I know we mentioned the Wakey game which was the lowest attendance that I have seen from a Fax following at a game in a long time. From someone who has gone religiously for around 40 years and even when we moved down to the Shay there was a group of about 20 of us that would go to every game, we would book dining packages, most of us had large sponsorship packages at one time or another, but over the last few years this number has dwindled right down to 4 or 5 if we are lucky, dining is too expensive and poor quality, and none of us sponsor anymore for one reason or another, and the ones who still do go are picking and choosing games.

Last season was the first season I had really picked and chosen games but the games were snoozefests and I could easily go and watch an amateur team on Saturday and have Sunday free and if you pick a decent game it can offer a bit more entertainment than what we have served up in the games over the last couple of seasons. The fact that our games are shown on YT a couple of days after I am not sure helps things as I know I can watch the game a couple of days after anyway if people have said it were a good game.

So I would still class myself as a diehard fan but Im not going to drag my mates down to games for the reason that TF mentions about the price when for the same money you can go and have a few pints at an amateur club and a lot of my mates do now sponsor at amateur teams where it always feels like your money is more appreciated. How do Fax tap in to the area to attract new fans? Its no longer as simple as giving out some free tickets at schools knowing parents will have to take their kids, you can see even when they have the community teams down you might get 7 or 8 out of maybe 25 or 30 players so even on planned days parents are not sending their kids. When I were younger everyone either went to the football or rugby because thats just what you did but there is just so much else that people can do these days. Its obviously not just a Fax problem but it is one that we can see is affecting us massively.

The biggest problem Fax has are the same problems many other clubs are having including losing former supporters and some of their so called fans keep slagging them off on the public platforms, almost every thread is littered with them.

You can just imagine if they were an hotel with the same sort of reviews from those connected to the place how many new visitors they'd have.

The flip side you could argue would be if those people who were slagging the club off had not have kept asking questions, would we still have a club? The proof is in the pudding about how badly the club has been run, is there any chance that if it were better run then there would be less people slagging the club off?

The flip flip side is how many of those people who are slagging off the club and asking the questions were capable of supplying an answer themselves?

This situation is precisely what I said, Fax are facing the same problems many other clubs are facing so it would be more accurate to say the proof is in the pudding about how badly the CLUBS have been run.

Is there any chance of the clubs being better run by slagging them off?

The choice of support or slagging off usually depends on each persons disposition and what type of people they are inside.

Yes, using your hotel anaology, if a hotel was constantly getting bad reviews then the owners may do something to improve those reviews.

Personally I think this season has been poor due to multiple mitigating circumstances, injuries to important players, failed sponsorships , leaving board members. The ones being criticised shouldn’t be the ones that remain especially by people who don’t have the balls to be accountable themselves. There’s obviously a lot of cliques at Halifax and rather than coming together some choose to point the finger rather than lend a hand .

As with the hotel reviews some people are just serial moaners who have never run anything, haven't got the means or ability to do so and have no idea of how to do so themselves and frankly their not qualified.

Others doing the finger pointing have failed in running their own businesses and listening to bad advice from amateurs or failures will only make the situation worse.

The proof is in the pudding because the bigger picture shows.

It's not just one hotel (Fax) though is it, most of the clubs are losing millions and many are on the brink.

Are all the BoD's at these other clubs not trying to improve and incapable of running their clubs then, is it only at Fax?

Are there underlying reasons why the game is dying across the sport, yes and many of them have been aired multiple times on the same public platforms including by the same ones doing the slagging off.

Just a few of them are.
IMG are a complete waste of time.
The RFL are the most incompetent governing body in sport.
The SL clubs are only concerned about themselves and are taking all the money whilst using the other clubs for their own ends.
The entire system needs changing.

This ones the best which most if not everyone would agree with.

Without a multimillionaire sugar daddy we've no chance, well we haven't got a sugar daddy so we've no chance then.

It's money that makes the world go round and the root causes are now too deeply ingrained and the clubs have become unsustainable at current levels as can be clearly seen.

Just as with many of us it's getting to the point we can't afford to go to the game it's getting to the point where the clubs can't afford to be able to run the game and their caught in the net and can't disengage.

I'm sure with hindsight every club could have done better but I'm just as sure that the way things are no matter what they do isn't going to be enough and slagging people off for not being able to fix the unfixable certainly isn't the answer.