A view I'm sure most on here now seem to share. But it still fails to answer the Catch-22 question of how could you replace him if you could not afford to? By which I mean you'd have to shell out cash well in advance of the improved income you expect to get, but you may not have much spare cash to shell out cos every penny is accounted for?

Its not trying to be clever - its a deathly serious question. One that many other non-sports businesses have had to contend with, as a result of first the credit crunch and then the resulting deep recession. And many who could not find the cash to take necessary actions fell, and are falling, by the wayside.

The money has to be found from somewhere if means the club offering some sort of share issue then so be. I know this seems drastic but if nothing changes and we go in to 2010 and we have a similar season as this year I honestly believe that we will have to get used to being a bottom half side for the foreseeable future.

Not surprised its you who has come up with the one obvious way of breaking the Catch 22. I deliberately kept quiet on this earlier to see if there would be any appetite for such action. Yup, that's the way to do it.

But (as always, there is a but...) the existing shares will have little effective value, so in the normal course of things the investors in the new shares would expect disproportionate voting rights through e.g. issuing the new shares at a deep discount - something the existing shareholders would likely not be at all happy with, I suspect. Plenty of ways round this, PROVIDED the new investors were prepared to recognise at inception that they'd be putting money in for not a lot in return. Fans might well do this, although to raise - say - £1/4m if 1,000 people were prepared to shell out would mean £250 per head. What you reckon?

Alternatively, issue debentures (secured loans) or preference shares to fans, like some soccer clubs do. That way, no dilution of ownership of the club, but at the expense of taking on debt which has a separate set of implications. Preference shares would be ideal from the club's POV, but probably the worst of all worlds for investors.

Soccer clubs issuing debentures usually do something like "invest x and you have your own special seat for y years", don't they?

I'm sceptical that enough fans could be persuaded to part with enough cash, especially in the current economic environment and with the poor poor form, but even so you have suggested a solution where no-one else yet has.

Or we find external folk with money to invest...which is what the club has been trying to do for years, of course.

Incidentally, Stains just issued a load of new shares - mostly to McManus & Co in exchange for directors' loans to the club, but also nearly £400k in a placing of new shares. Would that we could raise £400k in that way!

I Think you'd be shocked how many fans would be willing to take up any offer from the club. Also it's doesn't cost much for the club to put a few tentative feelers out amongst the fans to gauge the interest.

I personally reckon we'd struggle to get 1 in 5 season ticket holders to stump up £250 right now. I suppose nobody knows until the question is asked.. but I'd be surprised.

to Adey's long and highly considered post.

On the point of how attractive or not we may be to an incoming (say) top Aussie coach - I take the points made entirely, except that the only situation I see as being possible is if we not only chose the "new coach" option (££££) but also were prepared to give the new coach options for acquiring/disposing of players (££££££££).

I wasn't suggesting that we would get a new coach in a vacuum, or that he would come, if we just said "that's yer lot, work with them, you've no budget save what you sell". I don't see any top coach buying that.

But as Adey has pointed out, there is every reason to suppose that there's no chance of being able to muster the relevant amount of £££££ to make this scenario happen and so it may be academic.

Looking on the bright side - not only have we offloaded the rest of Tame Tupou's wage - we got five hundred quid for him as well. Maybe that's hwta Mac referred to when he said it was not all doom and gloom?

Off up to Darwin for ten days, so won't be on much. Wanted to put down some considered thoughts but I won't better Adey and FA's contributions. The Sack Mac camp have made some fair points over the past couple of days and there's a lot for the club to consider.

Have fun.
Lets hope we win while you gone, then we can blame you.

How about an extra 1,000 on the gate paying an average of £20 to see a better performing team?

Indeed. Or better still, 5k on the gate since as a minimum that must be what we need? That is part of the longer-term underlying solution. Although its not an average of £20, and the profit and cash contribution from each incremental body through the turnstiles is well under half that so you won't get as much extra cash as you might think.

But the cash inflows would (largely) come in time, whereas the cash outflows consequent upon the action most on here are clamouring for would be front-loaded. Unless someone can come up with a pot of cash NOW, Job not sorted.

So to sum up.
i) We can't afford to replace the manager.
ii) THe Chairman doesn't want the job but neither does anyone else
iii) The players are contracted on their current salaries so we have to stick with them
As you say we are in a Catch-22 situation. It is surely time then for the club to have one last throw of the dice. We cash in on our only asset and sell Sam Burgess. Selling Newlove launched the Bulls and so maybe selling Sam could save them. Whilst it seems a little drastic what pleasure is there watching him performing like a thoroughbred in amongst a lot of pit ponies (For thos born after Maggie Thatcher. Pit ponies used to drag coal trucks underground. N.B. Pits were big holes that coal used to come from)

Lets take this 'we cannot afford to do any thing' into the future.

Come the next round of license applications we will not have contributed anything on the playing front, out of the playoffs this season, can we improve on this next year. The marks for the grounds being x% full will not be achieved with the reduction in support. Both areas where we scored strongley last time around.

How will we compete with the other teams in super league plus the teams from NL1 who may outscore us on both the above.

Do we want to stay a top flight club or possibly risk being in NL1, but with a good balance sheet.

The "points system" is entirely irrelevant. That was proven in the last lot.

They'll make up a points system that best suits the clubs they want in the league. Then ignore that same points system in order to put the 14 they want in there, regardless of how they scored.

Hence how Celtic ended up in the league last year, as well as another club or two I could name, whereas the likes of Widnes, Toulouse, Halifax & Leigh, who probably scored more than them, didn't.

Forget the points system, it won't make a blind bit of difference. We get a franchise if the RFL wants us to have one. Simple as.

I have posted precisely this on a number of occasions recently, and in more detail. To recap: we received a B licence last time - that's 5-7 points. IIRC re scored 7. If we don't get the OSV, then next round we gain a point for the salary cap breach, but could lose 3 for ground < 40% full, average attendances <10k and not making a major contribution to the game. That looks to me to be the worst case, and gives 5 points so still (just) a B licence. We'd have probably 7 points with the OSV, worst case.

I asked questions about this process at the Fans' Forum, with precisely this in mind.

My guess is that without the OSV we would still outscore enough clubs to remain in the "pass" band, but with another season like this one it would be far more marginal and we'd be sweating. With the OSV, we would be strongly-placed for an A licence provided something improves on the field. Remember the "contribution to the game/top 8 finish" criterion SHOULD average last year, this year and next year, as would the "crowds >10k" criterion

However, I also think DILLIGAF may be right in that if the RFL decide they want us out then they'll tweak the criteria accordingly. We have a large club not far away who clearly do not wish us well, and with a surfeit of clubs in West Yorkshire and a resurgent Halifax club who will surely be a strong candidate next time round we are far from secure.

And remember - you lose a point for not having "a good balance sheet" (the "solvency" criterion), but unlike clubs with a rich owner this club CANNOT fail the solvency test and still keep operating. Some others CAN, because they end up with a technically insolvent balance sheet kept going by loans from directors/owners. We don't have that luxury. I wish some people would understand that we simply do not HAVE the option of living beyond our means to buy success - we've done that before, and this is where it got us. The only way this club could survive with an insolvent balance sheet is if we could find someone to lend money to the club who would certify that he/they would not seek repayment. Any volunteers?