apart from Mcmanus at saints i don't think the other so called 'benefactors' will be here long term.wire and wigan's accounts were subsidised,as are rovers obviously,but what happens when these people decide to go?or say,hit financial problems?wakefield for a lot of years have relied on ted richardson,but he is no longer able to provide finance,hence their struggle.salford are subsidised by john wilkinson too,for which he readily admits.Leeds made a profit,due only to the sale of property/land iirc?

such is the merry go round that is sport / business huh

Gretna < enough said

Wimbledon.

A Sugar daddy who uses his own money doesn't destabilise a club IMO. It is those who use other people's money (ie people who want and expect it back) or build a system from which it is impossible to retreat, that destroy otherwise sound clubs.
It doesn't have to be one of the other - you can have a sugar daddy and a sound business to fall back on. Wire would be okay (not as strong as now, of course), Saints too, once they're in their new ground. HKR would maybe just about get by with some trimming of the squad, Huddersfield perhaps and certainly Quins would struggle.

possibly,and possibly not!! if Moran was to say he has had enough,wire would struggle to cope financially.their off-field revenue streams aren't as good as people like to think,and they rely heavily on Mr Moran to subsidise this.

They regularly get over 10k and would still have the Sky money - they mightn't expect to compete [ifor[/i SL, but they could certainly compete [iin[/i it.

Now we're in SL the HKR board are the difference between us competing [iin[/i SL and merely surviving.

To compete regularly with Wigan and Leeds even the best-supported other clubs need a benefactor IMO (for reasons that are not all economic). The cap does even things out at least.

Where do Wigan come into it......ok last season they won it but Lenaghan isnt as coined as what Whelan was and they won bugger all under his ownership and was nearly relegated 1 season...so a "Benefactor" dosent help at all...if anything...they shore up the shortfalls......where would Hudds be without Davey.......only 2 teams make a profit...Us and Leeds...and 1 of them doesnt have a Benefactor.

it is broke we perenial under achievers!!!!!

IMO, its not about BBQ's or pass holder events, its about the communication coming out of the club via the website, email and other media.

The club have tried to make it very clear that they will not respond to rumour and rightly so. Otherwise they wold have to made an almost daily statement denying something which someone has made up. That what makes the rumours threads on this board largely pointless. If it comes directly from the club then there can be no argument.

I'd rather have this than the unprofessional, oneupmanship attitude of a few people east of our club

Not saying I am right, just my opinion. How do you think the club could get closer to the fans?

Facebook!!! Its the future I tell ya!! Oh hang on wait a minute

Think the club has made significant strides over the last year or so and is getting there with media manager, number of forums, facebook, hull fc tv etc etc but after all it is a professional business so has to stay remote/insular to an extent from the fan base or risk losing its focus slightly and being tempted to do what people want rather than what is right for the club..

We seem to be struggling with this one. The only suggestion made so far is the "Hull KR seem to manage it", yet their fans are, IMO, poorly informed on a range of current issues. As has been referenced earlier, I'm glad that in the main our board avoid the rather tragic point-scoring of Hudgell, (bringing up Crocker in the League Express, despite the fact that Eastwood, Carney and Bird were similarly impacted at the same time) and Morgan (bigging up Hall's defence against Huddersfield) and leave this sort of thing to the fans who do it best; "She fell over", BTW.

I've found this thread quite an eye-opener. Normally we get a lot of criticism of our board, but perhaps what we're seeing is frustration at our under-delivery on the pitch just taking up more airtime than what appears to be a broad consensus that the board are generally doing the right things with the right intentions and if they announced they were leaving tomorrow we'd thank them for their legacy (if we couldn't persuade them to stay).