O/T Our Chairman

A good article today in the Telegraph :- (Jonathan Liew)

A couple of months ago, Marwan Koukash returned to Palestine for the first time in 46 years. It was the land where he was born, the land from which he fled with his family in 1967 to escape what would become known as the Six-Day War. The Israeli bombs started falling. So Koukash started walking.

“We walked for three days, up and down them hills, from the village where we were born, to cross the river for safety,” the millionaire owner of the Salford Red Devils says. “It was a horrendous experience. You go back as a successful person in life, but you start to have flashes about what took place. When you are driving through some of the roads you actually walked, you become very emotional.”

The family crossed the river into Jordan, where they lived in a refugee camp for three years. In 1970, when war broke out again, they moved to Kuwait. There, Koukash was joined by his father, who scraped together enough money to send him to England to study. The point is this: when you have lived through that, the prospect of upsetting a few rugby league administrators is not going to give you too many sleepless nights.

In the year since he saved Salford Reds from extinction with a last-minute takeover, Koukash has upgraded the club’s facilities, changed their name, signed 14 new players and issued a stinging rebuke to everything from the Rugby Football League to England’s World Cup performance. No matter. What he is brewing on the River Irwell is a revolution, and no revolution ever took happened without a few noses being put out of joint.

“I’ve got a group of players that’s going to give me 110 per cent effort,” he says. “Each one of them has a point to prove. Each one of them wants to be a part of that dream. And the dream is to go from finishing living in a s--- house to living in a penthouse the year after. It’s never been done.”

Ambition? In spades. Salford finished bottom of Super League last season, yet Koukash is targeting a top-four finish this time round.

To make the dream reality, he has signed some of the game’s best-known players: Gareth Hock, Rangi Chase, Harrison Hansen, Adrian Morley. Approaches were made for Sam Tomkins, Sonny Bill Williams and Billy Slater. It will not surprise you to learn that Koukash is a vocal opponent of the salary cap.

He lights a Silk Cut as he outlines his philosophy. “If you or I get the chance to see Robbie Williams, wherever he is, you bloody go! So when I was talking about increasing the salary cap, it’s aimed at bringing superstars into the game. Say Warrington recruited Sonny Bill. Wherever he goes, he will attract a crowd. So it will help every other club as well. You could demand more TV money, higher sponsorship fees, and all of a sudden the sport is in a healthier position.”

As with Manchester City, the round-ball revolutionaries on the other side of town, Koukash has encountered much scepticism. “In rugby league, there is more resistance to change,” he says. “Being an outsider, it is easiest to see what’s wrong with the sport. It’s a fantastic sport that has been undersold and under-marketed, because people who run it probably want to keep it the way it is. My other reason for wanting the salary cap increased is that I truly believe Super League players are some of the finest athletes on the planet. But they are paid very little. And they deserve more.”

Like many successful businessmen, Koukash speaks as though he truly believes every word he says. “If I truly believe in my vision,” he says. “I could sell you that vision. You would be tempted to join the revolution. I could make you believe me.”

He is addicted to his work, rising at 4.30am to look after his other commercial concerns, a corporate training company and his stable of racehorses.

It is hard not to trace that iron will and unquenchable drive back to the upbringing he recently revisited. How did he feel seeing Palestinian men, women and children being made to queue up at checkpoints by Israeli soldiers with guns, kept in cages as their papers were checked, prisoners in their own land? For the first time, he sighs.

“Depressed. After all, they are my people. And to see my people suffer like that is very hard to accept. You walk through Jerusalem market, and you see Christians, Muslims and Jews walking around. That’s the way it should be. Not caged in certain areas that we are not allowed to leave from. I’m not against the Jews in any way. They’re humans with a religion. But when people use religion as a means of justifying their political ends, that’s what I resent.”

Is Koukash’s quest to transform rugby league driven by the injustice visited on the Palestinian people? Not really. But the ambition and the vision: that has to come from something deep within. “I’m not a politician. But if people see me as a Palestinian doing quite a lot for the country, maybe they will see that Palestinians are not all about the images you see on television. Maybe they are the innocent ones in this struggle, and not the guilty.” And once again, you believe him.