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| WYSIWYG2, I am still to be convinced by what you say although I think I understand your argument.
Could a move happen? yes it could, you are absolutely right. Is a move likely to happen? I think this is where our views take a different path.
Yes, Derek has referred to the Leopards as a brand, but he has never said, so far as I know, that this means that the club will be relocated. If he has said this then please refer me to the interview/article because I need to read/see what is happening to our club because it affects us all.
If this link between 'brand' and 'move' is your interpretation of what he means then fine, that is your view and we are all entitled to our views but you say it as though this is what Derek has actually said, and, so far as I know he hasn't, but I stand to be corrected.
You refer to there being no sentiment in business. I beg to differ. Depends on the business person entirely.
Derek is a successful business man. The Leopards as a club are a business but the position is far more nuanced than that. Historically the club has always lost money, until our last season in SL when I think Derek announced that we had broken even. So, forgive me, what on earth is driving him to pump millions of pounds of his personal largesse into the club for, at the moment, absolutely zip return, if it is not pure and utter sentiment.
The club is his pride, its his passion. Trust me, if you watch his interview on the Saints Redvee fans podcast from a few months ago you will understand that there is a substantial yearning for revenge, yes, and I use that word very wisely, but that is what he is after, on those clubs who reneged on their word and who sold Leigh down the Swanny to relegation after proposing plans to remove relegation that year and to expand SL to 14 teams.
None of this passion, sentiment, feeling, revenge has got anything to do with rational business decision making. Its all raw emotion with him.
At the end of the day Derek is a Leigh lad, a Leigh rugby person, that is why the emotion runs through him in the way he handles the club. If someone who knows him better says that he runs his AB Sundecks business like that then I would be gobsmacked. You can see the emotional side of his character as an owner of the club when he reveals how he has tried on several occasions to sign some of the legends of the Aussie game. Some of the attempts have been utterly audacious. They may not have come off - perhaps Ferguson was an exception (there was more to his signing than just the money) - but it wasn't for want of splashing the cash.
What it does demonstrate is that Derek is just like all fans who run their own town clubs, he is, at the end of the day, just a kid in a sweetshop with a pocket full of cash and that is how he runs the club as a business. It is an utterly bonkers venture.
If Leigh was being run by an accountant then I might accept your analysis, but it isn't, it is being run by the manchild that is Derek. The club as a business yes, but its also his personal plaything. If purely business sense decisions were made he would have got out of the club years ago. It is sentiment that is keeping him in there.
I feel quite secure that whilst Derek is the owner then the club is staying put in Leigh.
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