I think the RFL have made it more difficult for Salford to attract a buyer (if indeed, it comes to that) by their treatment of the new regime at Odsal. Any prospective new owner will now have to factor in the fact that they will be victimised by the governing body and it well may be that final straw which puts then off.

From a Reds point of view, and indeed a rugby one, let's hope that it works out OK and Salford pull through.

Ring ring ring.
"Good morning, the RFL."
"Hi there, I would like to buy Salford."
"Oh great, thank you for saving the club. Oh you do know however, that although we support your endeavor 100% and are grateful to you for not letting the club go to the wall, that we will not let you have all the money you need this year. Oh, and we will not guarantee you a SL place to allow any long term investment to take place. Oh, and actually, just to make it that little bit easier, we will take the money we were going to give you and give it to your rivals. That's ok isn't it? As you can see, we are behind you 100%.
Hello, hello, hello...."

Are you secretly from Wigan?

Bloody 'ell I've been outed....

Sadly for Salford, the league only helped us out as much as they could becuse we were part way through the season, and because we have a crazy system of playing some teams more than others, it would have really messed up the league table.

they were not concerned with Bradford as a club, simply with ensuring we fulfilled all our fixtures for the season.

They way they have with held the funding just backs that up! The league are paying the other clubs to cover for the fact that they favoured us more than they had in the past with other clubs in admin (wakey etc...) so that thier crazy fixture system didnt de rail the whole competition.

Lets hope Salford get to round one, then they might hav a chance of some help from the RFL!

The RFL do not distribute the Sky monies, that is done by Super League Europe.

The board of SLE (i.e. all club owners, CEO or whatever) voted on the dispersal of the funds, they voted for themselves.....

The RFL is a bag o'e but this time its not their fault alone

If fans bothered to go to games rather than moan about everything under the sun then we wouldn't be in this mess. The RFL is turning a healthy profit, it's being run well enough. Blame the clubs and fans.

Sibbs Rhinos,

The RFL's job is to regulate and administrate the game of professional rugby league in this country. If numerous clubs in the elite competition are financially unstable, it is the duty of the governing body to put measures in place to ensure that the integrity of the competitions it runs is secure. By helping us the way they did, they did that.

Do they need to do more? does our game need more financial regulations? do we need to look closely at how much players and agents take from our game?

The RFL have painted themselves into a corner. They have taken considerable grants to promote RFL (the sport), they chose to do this by concentrating on the "elite" super league teams. They grant the franshises based on a financial report submitted by the franshisees. This gives the RFL a get out, we only govern the sport and do not run the clubs, it's the clubs fault. If they refuse the bids they can be seen as not promoting the sport and the grants will need to be repaid. The RFL need to take a long hard look how to continue. They might be making money for RFL, the governing body but the money from the fans, TV etc. should go to the clubs not swell the coffers of the RFL, that might help clubs better than having to go cap in hand to the RFL for help, who can't be seen to help as it is their job to govern. It goes round and round and round. The only winners here are the RFL, it's the sport, clubs and fans who suffer.

I may be a bit out of touch, but the RFL and the clubs used to be the same thing; each (professional) club had a member on the council and an even say, and vote, in debates. I appreciate we now have a paid, non-club affiliated, full time chief exec and also that the full council might have been slimmed down to a workable number of delegates but AFAIK the general principle remains the same and all the people making decisions on behalf of the clubs (apart from the chief exec) are from the clubs, even if expected to be neutral on club issues.

It is clouded even more by SLE, but again 'they' are yet another collection of former club officials making decisions on behalf of the rest. All in all it's pretty difficult to blame the RFL/SLE without, at some level, blaming the clubs.

You are the idiot.

Ignoring all the insults traded between some of the contributors to this thread, does anyone know what practical help Salford fans need to help their club survive? Our club benefited from a tremendous show of goodwill from the vast majority of RL fans -- there's no reason why that same support shouldn't be offered to the Reds.
And in terms of a permanent solution,if the RFL could offer to make a bid for our club, why not step into the council's shoes and form a partnership with Peel Holdings as Martin Sadler has suggested. Perhaps the other 12 clubs who have secured an increase in their Sky funding could start the ball rolling by donating that money back to save the Reds?

This is a very fair point. From what I recall there were several clubs that donated ticket proceeds to the Bulls, gaining great kudos in the process. Their gestures start to look slightly less altruistic seeing that they've since recouped the cash by divvying up TV money that would otherwise have gone to the Bulls.

I think the general perception is that the RFL agreed the bid for the Bulls because they realised the admin and the shareholding was a stumbling block to a genuine bid but there was never any intention of any long term holding of the ownership. Whether that applies to the Salford situation, I don't know, but if it does then maybe the same solution is appropriate - if not, it probably isn't.

What we should remember though is that doing exactly the same for each case isn't necessarily the [iright[/i thing to do. The RFL definitely should, and I'm sure will, do their best for the Reds but the best thing for the Reds situation might not be what turned out to be the best thing for us.