Let's not forget, either, that Wire could well have won the 2001 Challenge Cup semi-final under DVDV. We were actually on top against the Bulls early in the second half, Nikau had a try disallowed for offside ( the ref did not even go upstairs for the video ref's input ) which clearly wasn't offside. On such small things do events hang sometimes. The final against Saints would have been very difficult but I remember one of the senior accounts staff at Wire telling me that not getting to the final (never mind winning it) had cost us £200,000, which would have been a huge boost to the impoverished coffers of the Wire back then.

i dont know how true it is, but i know someone who was involved with the club at the time and they tell me that DVDV was actually putting in his own money into the club at one point we were that skint. Apparently DVDV was quite a wealthy man with some successful businesses in Aus, and dug deep to keep us going, including stumping up players wages out of his own pocket. what ever the faults are that people see in the bloke, he went way beyond his job description if this is true

Yeah that is true, I think it was mentioned in Scully's book, or it might have been Nikau's can't remember now. He made sure players didn't go unpaid when the club had cash flow problems.