I'll throw a question into the pot on this.

Your the owner of a rugby league team and your best and brightest young talent for some time is continually either being ignored for selection or played out of position what do you do?

I think that at some point Wilky needs to put his hand up and say he needed to grow a set earlier in the Racthford saga, he should have hauled SM into his office and said play him, what on earth could SM have done?

Every man and his dog knows that Ratchford should have played every game he was fit for last season instead of being dicked about by SM.

I fully expect to see him after Hodgson retires develop into one of the best attacking fullbacks in Britain.

FFS, he's a very gifted player and one who I would like to see for years to come in a Salford shirt. You'd believe from these postings he's another Donachie or Carige!

Point of interest BigPev, what exactly are these "with all our new funding streams"? We do NOT own the stadium nor most of the finances we get from them. We are, like many tenants in the housing market, renting from a mixture of public and private ownership. We may make sales from the programmes and maybe any extra once 5000/6000 fans pay entrance to cover the base level of the rent. Not beer sales, not food sales, nor much of the business "box" sales.

We could find it difficult to pay our way.

Note for MR: what sort of coach will allow such interference? History is littered with failed sports clubs where the directors thought they could select the team.

Gutted he's leaving. sums up the disaster this season has been.
sitting here wondering why we bother. 3 year into a franchise , about to move to a new stadium , new coach , still cannot hold onto our best players , so what was the chuffin point ?

So what?

A young player decides to follow a different path. He's hardly a Salford Legend, as much as I like him as a player. He hasn't exactly set the world alight either, moments of magic interspersed with average displays. Now that could be down to our former regime not utilising him correctly or the fact that he actually isn't as good as his hype (yet).

I don't wish him any ill and hope that he goes on and becomes what he has the potential to be, I just think some fans seem to think that he is a RL Messiah when in fact he is just a young lad with a bit of talent.

It's not the Clubs fault, a player will decide what he wants and will go through with it regardless.

I agree entirely mate. Que sera sera and all that

I dont understand why fans think a player should be loyal to any club. He isn't from Salford, and he wasnt a child supporter.
If i were offered the same money at Wigan or Warrington, I would go. The idea of a sporting career is to win as much as possible in the short time available.
Look at Myler & Coley? Not world beaters by any stretch ( through Mylers backing up ability is exceptional, the rest of his scrum half play is average) but part of a sensational game at the weekend.
Why should Ratchford ignore the potential elsewhere to stay at Salford?

There are a few things mentioned that I totally agree with.

1st of all why didnt we sort this out last year ?
and why didnt JW pull rank and tell mcrae to play him instead of the woeful smith's ?

My personal opinion is that I'm not to fussed that he's on his way. Myler was hailed as the next big thing and to be honest take out his backing up and he is very average !! and our replacement for him....Daniel Holdsworth who has been a massive improvement.

Jordan Turner was another so called good young talent and tbh not seen him set the world alight at Hull.
Good luck to Stef and all but im sure Salford will move on stronger and better.

Announced this morning on GMR that Ratchford is certain to go despite being offered a better contract at Salford - Looks sure to join Warrington although Wigan were interested.
Nothing we dont already know but it seemed allot more disapointing hearing it on the Radio

Guess what, MR I got up this morning!

As for turning out the lights ... the club's floodlights are very capable of doing that themselves.

Funding ... I have been told a recent post by Walkdenred is closer to the truth than we like.

Anyway I still hold that it is not the job of JW to dictate to any coach who plays and where they play.

This is all so indicative of Salford as a club-regardless of anything else you tie down promising young players well in advance.Look at the Nasri situation at Arsenal as well-it becomes disruptive and a side show that affects both the player and club/team.In addition a healthy transfer fee.Salford are and have been a shambles.

So much this. I was genuinely beginning to think I was the only person who isn't absolutely gutted by this news. Granted, Stef is a talent, no doubt about that, but I can count on one hand the number of times he's dragged us to victory with an absolutely outstanding display. This can obviously be attributed to previous management regimes, or the players he plays alongside not being up to scratch etc etc, however for all the potential I don't acutally think our starting 13 will be that much worse off without him.

As The Butcher said, I don't wish him any harm, but come on people this is just one player. We have a new coach, stadium and plenty of room to manoevre on the quota side of things, this is not the end of the world. The only thing that irks me is that we're getting absolutely naff all for him. At least with what's his face we got a nice pay cheque.

If we would have sold McRae earlier we'd only have been waiting for Matt Parish to arrive as he was still doing State of Origin.

Since when has Chairman or Director intervention on the playing side ever benefitted a team? It would have been ludicrous for Wilky to entrust the coaching side of things to McRae and then demand he should pick certain players in certain positions just because he's the owner/chairman. Wilky is a lot of things (good and bad) but he isn't an interferring Chairman, thankfully.