saints were in a heap of trouble before mcmanus came in. He's turned them around financially

The problem with benefactors is they don't last forever. What state will huddersfield be in when davy goes, similarly wire with their financer. The RFL should be imposing sanctions on clubs who don't manage their finances properly

Warrington made a profit of £160k last year, albeit on the back of the Challenge Cup. Interesting that the only clubs threatening to make a profit all have A licenses.

They must all be taking salaries from the club then. FC have negative P&L reserves, so the payment of dividends is illegal.

Are payments for "consultation" and other duties performed on behalf of the club are paid , just like players wages ?

These ofshore payments, are these the ones paid into Singapore banks to Australsian players and others requiring a percentage of pay ( or image rights ?) to be paid into of shore accounts. I know the Inland revenue are now taking an increasing interest in these " funds" .

Yes. Point is this though. Even after taking these payments into account we still make a profit, which suggests to me, since we are the only club making a profit and spend the full cap (or thereabouts) that the directors aren't taking the pi$$. Even if they are, so what? Without them there wouldn't be a club and the path to the KC is hardly well-worn by multimillionaires who've supported the club since childhood and want to buy them out. It's their club and their tenure has probably been amongst the most commercially astute ones in the history of the club.

Thanks I was not having a pop, I know that this sort of thing has gone on in the past and may well do in the future. I do agree that the present management have done a good job in keeping the club not only afloat but in profit. My problem with them is that they have scant regard to the fans at times and in fact take decisions that are at odds with a lot of fans and they take offence when the fans kick back.

They have made some howlers in PR dept in recent years and have got away with many of them, but one day they will push it too far and thats when the whole lot will come tumbling down.

That's your opinion but I'd counter with the fact that our gates are strong in the context of the competition and our merchandise operation is second to none - our supporters have shown excellent loyalty after a couple of poor years on the pitch. The point is that, whatever else the board have done the bottom line is that we're financially self-sustaining (one of the only clubs to be in this position, despite having creditors of £2.4m not too long ago) and income is up rather than down. I'm just not sure what this "pushing it too far" you talk about might be - do you have an example? Thackraygate and Cookegate were 2 and 3 years ago respectively. The Friday night thing caused a kerfuffle 2 years ago, but again, the bottom line is that gates and passholder numbers are up. The Reardon thing was stupid, admittedly. IMO the club and Rule do seem to have learnt a bit on the way. Just don't know what might cause the club to fold/"come tumbling down".

On a related point, I've read a couple of times that someone said on the radio on Friday that FC was worth £1.5m. Does anyone know who and what the context was? If that's the case, why don't we call up Nick Barmby? He's probably got that in his back pocket.

in an attempt to have longer term stability I would hope so. RL must be one of the few professions where wages have been reduced consistantly over the last 8 years.

Allowing clubs to reward loyalty whilst still being able to develop youth talent has been stiffled by a diminishing cap in recent years IMO.

As we are now debt free I'd be reasonably confident we have made quite a bit of profit over the last few years.

Debt can be cleared by investment as well as profit though - don't know if that was the case here.

Even if I had the money I wouldn't invest in Hull FC from a money making POV. The returns are quite low & the inherited risks involved with investing in sporting clubs especially within a sport that turns over relatively small amounts just isn't worth it.

However from a fan point of view I would be happy to lose money (relative to other P/E) to ensure the club continues to exist no matter what & hopefully be able to bring success with the help of that money.

No she's from the bottom of it