I didn’t agree with the arrangement in the first place and can’t say I was too sad to see it fall through but I’m not convinced at all that Edwards backed away from that deal doubting his ability. The guy has self belief and confidence in bucket loads and it doesn’t stack up for me but I’m not overly fussed with the reasons. Lam has a rolling contract now according to Lenagan last night and May it may not stay longer than next season.

Posted a report on the other forum. Quite long and can't be bothered to repeat myself so check it out if interested.

Cheers pal. Some positive stuff about future revenue opportunities and financial forecasts. I do wonder what cuts they've made to go from a £1.4 million loss to a projected loss of £300k for this year. Particularly given the marquee signings.

The marquee signings will probably be in the next set of figures after those I guess.

One thing I don’t think has been said enough about these losses is that as much as it’s something we should all be thankful for that Lenagan is prepared to cover them, he also holds responsibility for them in the first place. He runs the business (along with support of his staff) and that business is running at a huge loss and whilst some of the reasons are out of his control (Sky scheduling for example), that’s not the case for everything (Australia games, marketing, recruitment).

I think from listening to him the other night, they’ve made some tough decisions to arrest the crowd slide. He says they wanted to go in a different direction from Wane and play a more attacking brand of rugby (Wanes choice to go but they were comfortable with it due to wanting change)and they’ve backed Lam to the hilt with the players to make that happen. They’ve looked at season ticket pricing and now it’s up to the people to back it.

They need to continually push season ticket sales. Give updates as to how many are sold or set targets. It really creates a buzz when they announce they’ve reached XXX ticket sales. I remember a few years ago when we broke the 10k season tickets, I’m pretty sure the marketing and regular updates given really helped to achieve that target.

My only issue with the current arrangement is that there is no stability beyond 2020. It may be all change again. Whether you agreed with the Edwards appointment or not one thing it did offer next season was stability for X amount of years. I accept however that it’s quite possible and feasible to say without confirmation that Edwards wasn’t coming and Lam was staying on, that we wouldn’t be within 80mins of, what was in the not too distant past, an unlikely GF appearance.

The indications the other night were that Lam will probably go after another year but it’s not set in stone and he’s on a rolling deal. I think there may well be continuity in some form by appointing from within. They noted when the Lam one year deal was announced that they felt Winder wasn’t quite ready. It’s feasible that in another years time they may think he is.

I was intrigued by the comments he made about tapping up George Burgess whilst on the Australia trip. He said we spent a lot of time with the Burgess brothers whilst we were there. The trip may not have been as financially successful as we’d hoped but it had other benefits. He even said ‘who knows, maybe there’ll be another Burgess brother here after next season’. Sam anybody?

I forgot about that comment. I wasn’t sure if he meant here as in Wigan or super league but I can see Sam Burgess following the likes of George and Widdop and coming over here to finish his career. His run ins with the NRL disciplinary seem to be getting him down and they’d go easy on him over here given his status (like they did with Morley).

Sam would demand a marquee spot. He’s no spring chicken either, nearly 31 and when our next marquee spot becomes free (on the presumption Hastings goes back to the NRL) he’ll be 33.

I’m not saying don’t sign Sam, I’d love nothing more than to have him at the club. I do advise caution though; would he be value for money at 33? My heart says YES but my mind isn’t sure.

Without knowing his future form and size of contract it’s futile to attempt to arrive at a decision re vfm.