Really? So what happened at Leeds RLFC? Were the people running the club such as Alf Davies, Dennis Greenwood and Harry Jepson really such terrible businessmen?

What happened at Elland Road? Bradford City? Portsmouth? Southampton? Leicester City? Hull City? Middlesbrough? Rangers?

The idea that people run their sports clubs exactly the same way that they run their businesses is ridiculous, no matter how much you might ostrich yourself and pretend that they do.

No the sport of football hasn't struggled and clearly no one said that.

Some football clubs clearly have though and you know it but are too stubborn to admit it because it shows the flaw in your argument that successful businessmen wouldn't mess up at a sports club just because they've been successful elsewhere.

yes

pretty much fraud in some cases, appalling business practice in others.

they can run them however they like. Just like their other businesses.

not at all, some football clubs have been run appallingly. Football hasnt. Football has thrived when the good businessmen are allowed to invest.

Football has thrived because of television. Without a TV audience of billions there wouldn't be a single top club financially viable. Nobody invests in football. They spend money they acquired somewhere else on an indulgence - or in the case of the guys who bought Man Utd, they are writing off huge debts from other business ventures gone wrong.

But they are financially viable, and have built themselves to be financially viable. Clubs are now turning profits and changing hands for a minimum of 100's of millions.

Plenty of people invest in football, plenty make plenty of money out of it.

Apropos of nothing at all, my hobby at the moment is reading the paper. There's one in Panama that's pretty good. The funny pages especially.

I understand they're exceedingly popular in Richmond.

Quote: SmokeyTA "But they are financially viable, and have built themselves to be financially viable. '" Guess how they did it? Massive TV deal and regulation of players salaries. www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... -fair-play And more recently.... www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... -costs-2bn Stop comparing football with Rugby League. It's like comparing an onion with Buckingham Palace.

Quote: SmokeyTA "But they are financially viable, and have built themselves to be financially viable. '" Guess how they did it? Massive TV deal and regulation of players salaries. www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... -fair-play And more recently.... www.theguardian.com/football/201 ... -costs-2bn Stop comparing football with Rugby League. It's like comparing an onion with Buckingham Palace.

Quite. Rugby League is a regional sport in every country is played in and is rooted in alienation and the larrakin effect.

Football is something a lot of people pretend to like so they have something to talk about with people they pretend to like when they go to the pub. The nearest RL gets to that is in some parts of Australia when Origin swings around.

If you look at the football clubs that have failed they are ones that were run by directors who have never been successful businessmen in their own right.

The majority of soccer clubs that go bust are small clubs that cannot generate sufficient income to support the operation.

Peter Risdale was a personnel consultant as an example he should not have anywhere near running a football club/business of that size - kid and sweet shop come to mind

Peter Hood/Chris Caisley - neither were serious business people - Hood didn't have a pot to wee in - the whole point of raising all the money was to get Hood out of the personal mess he had got himself into.

Maurice was a bookmaker with delusions of grandeur not a serious businessman that had generated significant personal wealth

Alf Davies wasn't a businessman, Harry Jepson was a school teacher and Dennis Greenwood inherited what ever money he had - hardly a threesome to move the club forward

To suggest the likes of Caddick, McManus, Moran, Lenneghan, Guash, Glover, O'Connor could not be trusted if the cap were removed is bonkers in my view

Somewhere there is a bucket of sand with your head buried in it.

Somewhere in that sentence there's an a metaphor you f'cked up.

Pardon?