The club

I asked the club whether they could guarantee that merchandise orders would be delivered before Christmas - didn't get a reply. I think they should have started delivering them earlier than the week before Christmas. That's cutting it fine.

It looks like an absolute shambles from what I’ve seen on Facebook. Yet again the club shooting itself in the foot. Delivery mishaps do happen but even the quality of the merchandise that’s actually there is laughable as well. There’s no excuse in this day and age.

It’s just incredibly frustrating as the things they are messing up don’t take much organising or thought. It’s nothing to do with having lot of money either, There are much smaller clubs/operations that do things better than us. Whoever is in charge of the merchandise/sales needs to be removed and better people brought in. It looks completely amateur, especially for a Superleague club

Sadly this is one of the reasons I have not parted with my cash this year for a season ticket, there is no clear leader at the helm and no contact with the club to reassure those like me who smell a rat.

We are told there is going to be a new outlook and attitude when it is the SSDD approach to all things Salford RLFC.

The conspiracy theorist in me thinks that the sales from merchandise has been swallowed up ad the issue of sold items to customers was never remotely possible for a Christmas deadline.

I've been expecting most of what is currently happening and my reasoning is that everything seemed to have been on hold pending the trustees taking charge, but each week the club has had to make an announcement about signings and then I expect they were told 'x' date is the deadline for getting merchandise for Christmas and so the club had to release the images and start selling with the expectation that Christmas delivery would be met in the nic of time, but the shipment has been delayed (not and unusual occurrence with imports) and Christmas delivery is surely unlikely but not impossible. Also the open day, I expect it's been held back for the trustees to host and then a last minute date was arranged for fans to collect season tickets, which of course may themselves be Christmas presents, and hopefully sell more merchandise, but the lateness of everything has caused the problem. I also expect the Ian Blease's hands are tied to a large extent. I'm not overly worried... disappointed, yes, but not worried. I've already alerted my niece to the fact she'll have a photo of her chosen shirt in a card and something 'to open' on Christmas Day.

Putting the trustees issue to one side, it doesn't take a business genius to recognise the potential profit-making and problems that the biggest holiday of the year could provide. The club have an innate skill at not recognising it AND leaving it all too late. Every damn year. If I did my job as poorly I'd have no job at this point.

As I can't see them shifting astronomical numbers of shirts a simple solution would be to have then delivered by players when they arrive.

The larger unapproachable subject is that Nigel Wood in his infinite wisdom has decided there needs to be more work on the take over proposal, this has dragged on for months now so surely they should have been in conversation with the powers that be as things progressed, making sure that hiccups like this don't happen.

I don't know why but I have a nagging sense of foreboding about the entire thing, this could be the ultimate opportunity for the RFL to get retribution on Koucash over his constant refusal to toe the party line.