Union?

From the annual accounts,Wigan made a net loss of £540k y/e 30 Nov 2009 and a net profit of £38k the following year.At 30 Nov 2010,they had negative net worth of £2.69m(ie liabilities exceeded assets)

Wowsers. For comparison, what is our net worth? Are we worse off?

Wiganers had better be careful what they wish for. A relegated latics could easily drag the goons down with them. Their minimal margins will soon be wiped out and instead of the current situation where football subsidises the rugby, could easily end up with the goons having to prop up the latics

Not necessarily - the premier league cashcow getting carted off to Maccie D's might be a major blow to Latics, but there's no reason at all that they couldn't still do financially quite nicely in the Championship or even League 1 - revenue streams in footie are much bigger even at the lower league levels than Superleague could ever dream of. MK Dons run a stadium about the same size as the Piedome in League 1 on less than 9K a game for instance.

Fully agree with you, clubs also get a real good parachute payment when relegated to the Championship

we had negative net worth of £1.46m at 31 Oct 2010 having incurred losses of over £2m in the two years 2009 and 2010.

The balance sheet at 31 Oct 2011 will make very interesting reading but it won't come into the public domain until next year.

I think though that the latics without the massive tv revenue coming from Sky would surely struggle even in the championship. They would lose all their premier league class players, they would be playing in front of home crowds of probably 5-6k. There crowds are low even in the premiership and they are bolstered by good travelling supports.

Going back to the topic financially from a company's perspective, share capital is much more advantageous than bank loans. We will save the monthly interest payments and there will be no obligation to pay the capital. The shareholders will be able to sell their shares to other investors if there is a market for the shares.

Realistically the directors have more or less pumped huge sums of money into the club with no realistic expectation of ever getting it back. For that we must be truly thankful and appreciate what a lucky club we are. If we can grow the revenues of the club with ticket sales and hospitality etc we are in a fantastic position going forward. I would go as far as to say the future looks very bright.

This all depends whether future profits generated by the stadium (which everybody here seems to be expecting) are re-invested into the club or whether the directors of the company decide to pay dividends to shareholders as per the normal business community.

I think it is un-heard of for a rugby league club to pay dividends however if the investors here wish to get a return they can get one by taking profits made by the club for themselves. Obviously other shareholders benefit as well bit by creating more shares for themselves then they get a bigger slice of the case.

When Warrington moved into their new stadium I believe that some of the existing shareholders let it be known that they would be looking to utilise the stadium to generate profits to provide dividends as a return on their investment into the previous black-hole of a rugby club unless somebody paid them for their price for their shares. Current owners of Warrington have confirmed that all profits made by Warrington will be re-invested into the club.

By 31st we will have taken possession of a £20 million stadium, that should up our net worth a touch

I think we can call it a contribution more than a loan. A quick bit of google research pulls up that the company Mike Coleman runs with his business partner Doug King is currently controlling $2.3Billon worth of assets. Somebody that runs a company that size surely must have a substanstial amount to blow for pleasure purposes.

Looking good for a new Saints legacy over the next few years. We have the facilities now, we have the youngsters coming through, and we have some good signings coming over. We just have to get the GF hoodoo of our backs now, and I could see this club becoming dominant once again.

We are missing the top level players that we always had. Long, Sculthorpe, Cunningham, Lyon etc were all a level above their peers when we won Grand Finals. We don't have that anymore.

I'm not saying trophies are an impossibility, but domination is not possible with the squad we'll have next year.

You're assuming we won't have top level players ever again Saddened. The beauty about having very young players is that they could be top level but we don't know it yet because they are noobs. And we have some talent in the junior ranks too. I think it's all quite exciting.

This year we were the closest we have been in five to winning the GF, with injuries undoing us just as they have done all season. Hopefully our conditioning regime will improve next season so that we can field a strong team for the majority of games. I wouldn't be so quick to write us off.

A

I am on a three year streak now in my season predictions. People think I'm slightly negative but I'm consistently right.