Quote rubber duckie="rubber duckie"I'd swap them for Saints all day long.'"
That bitterness runs that deep after all these years? Not sure what we've done to offend anyone over the last 5 years.
It's moments like this where I feel the likes of Wire, Saints, Wigan, Leeds, the RFL, Super League and Sky have an obligation to help out. I'm not suggesting they buy the club, but just support it at an appropriate level until a new owner can be found and help avoid the demise of the club. Split between 10 or so parties it really wouldn't require a lot of money.
It's a worrying sign for the sport that a club like Widnes can end up here. They've had the Sky money covering their player costs for years, brought the parachute payment down with them and still couldn't operate. It makes you wonder just how many clubs in the sport in this country are on the edge.
I think if the RFL is allowed to continue to degrade the sport, we'll be semi pro in 10 years from now and not far off fully amateur after that.
Licensing needs to come back and there needs to be a very thorough 'proper person' test on the owners and senior management. Scandalous that James Rule was allowed to be involved at Widnes. There should be a proper audit of funds to ensure the club isn't in doubt.
The cap is clearly an issue for the sport. Whilst there are one or two clubs who could benefit from that and bring a level of PR to the sport with big signings, it would only increase the pressure. The likes of Wakefield, Cas, Salford, Huddersfield and Hull KR would be cut off with an enormous gap in spending to some of the other clubs. There would be inflation of salaries across the board if the top clubs were spending a lot more and we'd see a lot more clubs go to the wall. A moderate cap increase linked to genuine commercial income is something they should look at. Exempting players produced by the club's own academy is another area they should look at.