Forget money, forget fixtures: someone step in and save Salford’s players

Rugby league: the leaders in player welfare.. until player welfare actually becomes a matter of some importance, of course.

There is no need for platitudes. For in-depth, overly worded introductions or pontification. The time for talking is over. It’s done. It’s now time for someone – anyone – with a backbone that claims they care about Salford Red Devils’ players to step in and stop this madness now.

Sunday was a situation that has been brewing for months, but it emphatically came to a head after a raft of senior departures left Paul Rowley with an 18-man squad, ten of them loanees, the rest young players who are being exposed to a level of rugby they are not ready for.

This is now all still going on for one reason and one reason alone: money. It isn’t competition integrity as some people would have you believe, with a scenario that Salford being unable to fulfil their fixtures is somehow better than this. If it is, it’s only just.

Because what integrity does Super League have when one team is getting beaten by 50 points most weeks – a scenario that will be the case for the last six weeks if this continues – and the teams who’ve been fortunate enough to play Salford three times get a distinct advantage over those who’ve played them twice? Is that a competition filled with integrity?

Super League owners are lending Salford players to finish the season because they are worried there will be some sort of financial consequence if, from this point, six fewer games than originally planned aren’t televised.

But in and amongst all of that is a group of players who are effective lambs to the slaughter each and every week. It’s tough enough for the loanees, dropped in at short notice and asked to perform.

But the young kids who aren’t ready to play in Super League and whose welfare is quite literally being overlooked by the game is another issue. It is absolutely scandalous.

So it’s time for the sport to come together now and put them, Paul Rowley and his staff and everyone at Salford first for once, rather than just expecting them to complete their fixtures because the rules have been manipulated to give them a chance of doing so.

Nobody is 100 per cent sure of the financial impact of Sky not televising Salford’s last six games. But if the TV deal required completion – head into the Championship on a Sunday afternoon and pick a game up there. You could showcase the teams vying to be in the 14 next year, for example.

Or perhaps Sky would have understanding that this situation is unique, caused by mis-management and scandalous governance and ownership and is not Salford’s players’ fault at all. Have we asked them?

And then there are two more key players in this. The RFL, who have loosened all of the rules on loan players to allow this to happen. They have to get tough now and step in and take a stand to show they care about players.

Competition integrity might be damaged in the here and now but anyone with a brain can see it’s not a situation that with good governance would ever be repeated. Other sports have coped with a team not finishing a season and managed to go again.

If it costs a bit of money: so what. What if a young kid suffers a serious injury? Is that a price worth less than a few quid to televise some fixtures that will lack any sort of entertainment or intrigue?

Then there are Salford’s owners. Incredibly sat inside the MKM Stadium on Sunday afternoon as if nothing was happening other than a regular Super League game, they have shirked questions and interview requests for months.

Someone now has to stand up, speak out and tell people what is happening. And it’s not the media who need to know: we’re meaningless in all of this. It’s the Salford stakeholders; the fans who spend their hard-earned money to follow them up and down the country.

The players who are putting their bodies on the line. The staff who are unpaid. The coaches who are working miracles with what they have.

They deserve answers. Not empty statements that have been fine-tuned and released to the press. Not rumours or speculation. Cold, hard answers.

Who is going to step up and do that?