[Bullseye]

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 8:51 am  

Peter Hood wrote:

I'm surprised it's taken you this long to realise the financial difficulties the club are facing are very much real. Whilst Marc Green continues to take out more than he puts in, we are doomed to failure.

Season ticket sales won't hit 2500, let alone the ridiculous figure of 5000. This putting more pressure on Parker and Hunter Paul, who have already got to find an extra £300,000 shortfall via increased sponsorship sales.

Worrying times. Hopefully the players wages for December are paid on time.

I’m not sure what purpose these posts are meant to have other than getting you through the night shift.

As far as I remember Green never said he’s going to put anything into the club – he said it’d be run as a business. As for him taking money out I think that’s a bit laughable. Have you seen the figures? I think he took over in order that he wouldn’t lose what he’d already loaned in the past. Trouble is I don’t see how the club will ever generate enough for him to see his money again. Nobody else bid as much as him to the administrator so the club is his and I can’t see a queue of other investors lining up. We are where we are. Having a go at him won’t change anything unless you know of a Ken Davy waiting in the wings which I doubt.

These are worrying times financially – as they have been for over 10 years.

I think we have a very slim to no chance of promotion this year and if we fail that’ll be it. If 2015 was **** or bust then 2016 really is.

After 2016 all bets are off.

In the meantime I’m going to enjoy what we have while we have it. There’s nothing else we can do as fans other than get behind the team.

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:10 am  

I'd find it a whole lot easier to get behind what we've got if the club were a bit more upfront about what the plan is. If we are having to make savings at 1st team level due to financial constraints then tell us. Is it just me getting mixed messages?

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:14 am  

Bets'y Bulls wrote:

Bets'y Bulls↓
Re: Bullbuilder
Wed Dec 23, 2015 12:09 am
I see this weeks league express has sammut nailed on for Workington and we sign a unproven Queensland cup player aged 25. He openly admits to being a general running team around the field which roughly equates to nil attacking flair and will see crowd moaning after say 3 games with his lack of breaking the line. Afraid this shows to me the lack of financial strength behind the club and no chance of promotion and not sure going forward of full time survival

I must be one of the few on here who is not exactly gutted that we have not signed Sammutt. Whilst he would have certainly been better than no scrum half at all, I think our need is for an organiser than an off the cuff player. My only concern is that Ferres in the T & A today says he will be trialled during the friendlies If it doesn't work out, the season is then upon us. I still think there is a half back to come at some point in the season.

[Bullseye]

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:19 am  

Given the recent brush with HMRC and the late submission of accounts are just two things that show that we’re on the breadline. Ferres’s press releases may be a bit sobering but they’re quite clear on the situation we’re in. I don’t think it could be spelled out any more clearly.

Obviously constantly plugging that line isn’t going to shift any season tickets. They have to talk up the club and it’s not all doom and gloom despite what “Peter” says. I’d say you shouldn’t see it as mixed messages rather than as the club doing its best to market itself in the context of being short of cash IMO.

Without the income it needs there will have to be savings. Green said he’ll run the club as a business so if we don’t get the sponsors or season ticket sales we need expect cuts. It’s been clear that we need 5000 season tickets. So far we don’t have them which explains why we’re signing unknown Aussie amateurs rather than proven professionals.

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 9:31 am  

While tone of forum is generally more downbeat these days its a result of a series of poor seasons and signings that have disappointed. Don't really include last year as a poor season as it was a big rebuilding job and we only failed at the final hurdle. A bit better luck in terms of injuries to the key players in last third could easily have seen us back in SL.

People keep saying we're signing players that are championship quality have to bear in mind we ARE a championship side with, until a few weeks ago, a Championship salary cap to match. our recruitment was done with this cap in mind. If we'd just gone out and signed SL level players we'd have had an 18 or 19 man squad which isnt enough.
As it is we have a squad where bulk of first 17 is lower SL quality. We've maybe got a few too many championship level players we could lose and replace with fewer but better quality players but its a case of striking a balance between quality and squad depth whilst having to deal with players that are maybe surplus but still under contract.
Also there's got to be some sort of pay parity between the players within the squad so we dont end up with a higher paid 'SL player' Camp and a lower paid 'champinship player' camp. Really dont know how leigh are managing that aspect with the big group of highly paid 'stars' they've brought in and suspect there maybe some discord in their camp at some point in season.

Would imagine our squad makeup would have looked fairly different if the cap change had been brought in earlier before we'd virtually finished our recruitment. As it is I suspect Leigh are virtually upto their new allowed cap whilst we still have a fair bit of space for recruitment later in season should some of new players not work out, as whilst we may be tight moneywise at this ,we should have more capacity to generate more income through the season from matchday revenues and merchandise due to our larger fanbase. Think squad as it stands could look totally different with one or two key signings.

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:06 am  

Bullseye wrote:

Given the recent brush with HMRC and the late submission of accounts are just two things that show that we’re on the breadline. Ferres’s press releases may be a bit sobering but they’re quite clear on the situation we’re in. I don’t think it could be spelled out any more clearly.

Obviously constantly plugging that line isn’t going to shift any season tickets. They have to talk up the club and it’s not all doom and gloom despite what “Peter” says. I’d say you shouldn’t see it as mixed messages rather than as the club doing its best to market itself in the context of being short of cash IMO.

Without the income it needs there will have to be savings. Green said he’ll run the club as a business so if we don’t get the sponsors or season ticket sales we need expect cuts. It’s been clear that we need 5000 season tickets. So far we don’t have them which explains why we’re signing unknown Aussie amateurs rather than proven professionals.

Is the message that clear? We still seem to be talking about buying the ground back from the council and RFL, who is financing that? Green stated that the winding up petition was 'incorrectly lodged'. Some might take that to mean all is rosey and it was simply an error, though I think we can assume that isn't likely.

The 5000 members might well be what we need but it's a completely unrealistic amount of sales. We didn't sell that many when we were still in SL, so we have no chance in our current position. I get that we might aim higher knowing we probably won't hit 5k but I doubt we'll hit 3k as things stand.

Sadly I do agree that promotion looks very unlikely with our current squad. But a few less shirt fillers and one decent 7 and I'd feel a little more optimistic in a one off game. Will we have one last throw of the dice in June/July? Guess we'll have to wait and see..

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:29 am  

Bully_Boxer wrote:

Is it just me getting mixed messages?

Definitely not just you.

There seem to be a lot of smoke and mirrors at the moment, and it's hard not to wonder why sometimes, even if you think along the lines of "we don't need to know everything". Unfortunately the last few years have understandably made us all quite paranoid and whenever the club don't seem 100% up front, it's hard to not think something's up.

Stuff like the Mullaney situation. It was obviously known for weeks before he was off, so why take so long to announce it? It just screamed of "we don't want to hurt season ticket sales".

[Pumpetypump]

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:40 am  

Things aren't perfect by any means, but the previous chap saying the morale of the fans is at an all time low? Well that's absolute tosh. When we first went into admin and periods thereafter I had a genuine lump in my throat and tear in my eye. I am peed off at our situation but we've been in darker places.

[Bulliac]

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 10:47 am  

If our, 'organiser', scrum half can create holes for such as Lee Gaskell to stroll through then I'll be very happy. After all, that was a major part of Paul Deacon's game and he wasn't so shabby.

I've said many times that halves need to be judged as a combination and imo, an organiser is exactly what we need to complement Gasky in the halves.

[Bullseye]

Re: Jarrod Sanmut : Wed Dec 23, 2015 11:05 am  

I think club communication has been poor at times. I do wonder how much of that is down to a fractured relationship with the T&A. Ross has had a few run ins with Lowes and that needs to be smoothed over. The club obviously want to portray things positively as possible but you have to strike a balance. I agree about the Mullaney situation. Rumours abounded of him going for weeks before it was confirmed. Then again we don’t know all the facts of the situation, he may not have been 100% going until well after the first rumour. I agree though it’s better to get bad news out there than have it bubble away and fester as rumours.

As for the apparently wrongly lodged winding up order that sounded a bit hard to believe at the time. Still, that’s dealt with now to the satisfaction of HMRC so that can be parked – no sense in worrying about it anymore. The ground thing I think is more of an aspiration than a genuine plan that’s ongoing. The only way that will be resolved is with a substantial injection of money from a third party. The council won’t be selling anything in the current climate unless they can get top dollar. I wouldn’t interpret aspirations as a sign that we’ve got money to spend on that.

I think we just need to take what we’re told with a pinch of salt. We’ve been fed all sorts of bull**** over the past 10 years so a bit of healthy cynicism is a good idea. However there’s no need to go overboard like “Peter”. Like Pumps I agree we’ve been in far worse positions in the past. That’s not to say worse isn’t around the corner but right now we have the second best team on paper in the division (and possibly the best on the field). While promotion is unlikely due to the disparity in leagues and salary caps we’re in it and who knows what may happen in a one off game. I’m hopeful Lowes has learned lessons from last year.