Imagine if Ken Morrison bought the Bulls and pumped money into it I wouldn't mind the Bulls playing at Morrison Stadium

And Adeybull they probably pay the players money (eg. Lee Briers on £80,000 a year and he gets a £100,000 bonus at the end of year or he get £80,000 a year and his bonus is £50,000 a year while his wife gets £50,000 a year being a receptionist in the club office). The numbers are not exact but use them as examples.

As said previously I wouldn't fancy us in beating any sides in this competition. We are simply that poor and I cant quite believe the deluded statement's coming from the likes of Langley saying that he believes where a top five side.

We are a joke and only we could concede up to thirty points whilst in possession of the football !

Their club was seriously insolvent. Without Moran I (and most of their fans that I have spoken too) doubt they would be here in SL today. Same as Shudds and Davy, Stains and McManus and Leeds and Caddick (in the early years of SL), as examples.

Those clubs' good fortune, and good luck to them. Its hardly their fault that we have not found a sugar daddy of our own. And some shrewd businessmen amongst them - Davy and McManus I especially admire. But anyone who thinks any of those clubs would have got to where they are now without their wealthy backers (or equivalent) is indeed fooling themselves. Indeed, most fans of those clubs fully recognise and appreciate what their owners have done for them.

I won't, because they are not relevant.

All those examples are covered quite clearly by the salary cap rules. All such payments count towards a player's salary cap value. I suggest you go read them - download the RFL Rules from their website.

If you want to avoid the cap, as an example go find a friendly "unconnected third party" prepared to pay the player loads of money offshore for his image rights or for other services rendered.

But the payments to the players wife isn't counted as the players salary it is the wifes salary for working for the club.

I honestly have never seen anything like today and didnt know whether to laugh or shake my head when it happend the 3rd/4th/5th/6th times. Even Wire decided to give you 10 points in the same fashion. I count 42 points in total today coming from the team who didnt have the ball at the start of the play.

Bloody crazy!

Wrong.

It is.

Go check out the rules. A:5.2.1 applies.

The salary cap auditor has discretion anyway to decide whether any payment is in respect of a player's playing contract. I suspect - but I do not know this for sure - that a bona fide employment for a spouse at commercial rates would be allowed by the SC auditor. Paying the wife a totally disproportionate salary for a basic job - as in the anecdotal tale regarding Steve Renouf's wife a few years ago - would certainly not be.

Indeed.

What did my head in was that we seemed totally immune to learning from our mistakes!

I wonder how many times some of those guys would have to bang their heads against a wall before they realised that actually it hurt?

Did you hear the ironic cheer when we finally put a bomb up on the last instead of a kick through for a charge-down?

Even then it was a crap kick that was defused on the full in the in goal area

Add to that the 2 kicks offs that went out on the full and no wonder most of the media were laughing in disbelief.

It's looking increasingly like a write off season once again... so disappointing. A massive blow given all the hard work and positivity in pre season.

Potter should be getting much better performances out of this bunch, but we still have too many ordinary players to compete with the likes of Wire. So depressing once again!

Adey you appear to have a good background knowledge of the state of affairs of the Warrington Club, I will add a few more facts to help you out. Firstly I agree havng a 'fan' and major shareholder who is willing to finance the club has helped immensly over the past decade or so but it it hasn't been plain sailing.

Warrington were in financial trouble and if you can remember had to sell 2 of the biggest names in the game literally to survive, these being Harris and Sculthorpe. The proceeds from that helped us out for a while, then we had a loan from Warrington Council of about £250,000, the council now own the ground at Wilderspool. These were bad times at the Wire, we made some high profile signings but still were a mid to lower table team.

The turnaround of course started with the appt of the great late Peter Deakin and Simon Moran. The plans for the new ground took what seemed an eternity especially with the public inquiry, but were successful and as you say benefited from Tesco funding the build of the HJ.

We were fortunate to move into the HJ following our first play off appearence so hopes were high. It didn't happen overnight though we made a few signings (which you could say were due to S Moran) but still were inconsistent. A few play off places came then we had a bad spell leading in Paul Cullen leaving and Jimmy Lowes being appointed head coach. I think the rest is up to date appt of Tony Smith who has now brought success to the club and backroom staff to support him.

As a fan of the wire for nearly 40 years, I have waited a long time for success. Watching in envy at the Bulls/Saints/Wigan and Leeds lift all the trophies over the years. I agree we have been fortunate with the stadium development and to have Simon Moran on board.

Not having full knowledge of your history, can you tell me how your club were financed/backed during your glory years in sl. Didn't you have a wealthy backer? In your opinion where and when did it all start to go wrong at the Bulls?

not too sure why we cant compete with the Warrington players ...


they have the same salary cap as us so our lazy players must be on a similar wage structure to them!

So why cant we go out and get this type of player on contract?

yes i know im being idealistic .. its not a level playing field. Other clubs play it clever .. the foreign clubs London/wales/france basically have a free hand in getting as many quality imports as they want! where we are left with "average squad players/team members!"

This has to be a 3 year plan ... during the 3 years we have to develop our "cheap" juniors until they are at a higher level .. then we can hopefully fill the squad with more expensive and more quality players.

sorry the likes of Sibbet, Sykes, Herbert etc etc are only good enough to be squad members .... if that!

We need to look at the bigger picture .. we are hopefully a developing club .. we've fallen a hell of a long way and recovery its not going to happen over night! We dont and never will know the full facts of the Orford saga and who it stopped us getting

keep the faith .. its a long walk back to being competitive!

ill settle for effort this year .. and hopefully the juniors wont turn out to be "stevo stars of the future"

1st July 2004