Quote: SLIMply the best "IE. WIGAN who after ten years of paying vast wage bills had no ground of their own!'"
Mo actually helped that.
The building of the Whitbread / Boston stand was under his tenure. The costs escalated out of all proportion as there was mining subsidy when the building of the stand began. It left a huge hole (excuse the pun) in Wigans finances.
Then when the ARL / Superleague war broke out in Australia there was a lot of silly money being offered to players to move over to Aus. You may remember that Connolly and Robinson were two who accepted contracts (although in the end they didn't go)
Wigan were dominant at that time, so had the players that the Aussies wanted. They had two choices, up the players wages to compete with the Aussie offers or let them go.
Jack Robinson (Mo had gone to the RFL ) and his directors at the time decided to pay the players more. That's how Wigan got into trouble so you could say that Mo was a big part of the attack on Wigan and not a defender.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, and maybe Wigan should have let the players go and rebuilt the team again.
Saints around this time were buying the likes of Newlove, Sculthorpe, Sullivan, Nickle, Matautia, Martyn and Goulding.
The rest is history. It's difficult for you because of the Widnes / Warrington proposed merger, but some of them would have worked.
Cumbria is still crying out for a superleague team.
Where are those thousands of fans who marched at Wakefield, Cas and Fev. They are not attending the matches.
A combined Fax and Huddersfield side could have worked.
PSG was the wrong choice of location, it should have been Perpignan / Carcassonne, but it has worked there hasn't it.
Mo had a vision and passion for the game that very few of us can ever match, and as I said earlier he is the ONE administrator that the Aussies respected and listened to.
Who was it that thought of the World Club Championship?
Who took the test matches to Old Trafford and Wembley?
What I think happened was a deadline to get the Superleague money from Sky and it wasn't thought out as well as it maybe could have been.
Mo is a very interesting character to talk to if you ever get the chance, and he does not shirk any questions.
But you may not always like his answers. He loves the game of Rugby League.
I know it's a little off topic, but it is slightly related.