Always a Wasp

I am puzzled by some of the 'angry' responses here. I took this as a nice gesture from Tigers. Whenever I have visited them, the staff and fans have been nothing other than great.

I cannot say that I will be taking them up on the offer, but since Covid and my heart attack, I have had to severely curtail what I do and where I go outside my home.

I speak for myself, and probably a lot of fans. We are in pain, but please recognise that the club is where it is because it owes, according to Stephen Vaughan, over £100m. No one forced Wasps to get that far in to debt, it was choices made by the management since the 'dark days'. For the last few years, Wasps have been a corpse still walking. Could things have been different? Yes, we could have simply folded way back then instead.

But do not 'blame' the other clubs. Self interest is inevitable, as is bending of the rules. To misquote Barbossa, "The rules is more what you’d call ‘guidelines’ than actual rules."

"Martyn Phillips, the chairman of Premiership Rugby (PRL), explained last week that the league could not endorse a situation where clubs were able to shed debt in administration but retain full access to central funding, arguing it would create inequality and act as a bad precedent."

Whereas persistent cheating and largely getting away with it creates no inequality and acts as an excellent precedent of course.  All clubs are equal, but some are more equal than others.

Quote from: HDAWG on October 15, 2022, 07:06:18 PM

Quote from: Vespula Vulgaris on October 15, 2022, 06:32:09 PM

And why was it OK for the EAs to blatantly cheat and then be given special dispensation, even be praised for helping rugby? If they can get special treatment why can't a club that has won more, and done more over the years also be given special treatment?

I'll bite. What special treatment were they provided that we aren't? We're potentially getting our players loaned out immediately, just like Saracens.

Also Saracens didn't struggle to pay their players, quite the opposite. Where as we will struggle to pay ours soon.

I hate Sarries, but it's delusional to act like they were treated better (in a completely different situation to ours) than us. What do we want the Prem to do? Pay off our debts?

I think it’s more to do with Saracens being able to keep their shares after being found guilty of ( imo) a bigger fault than maybe us and Worcester. At least we were trying to keep within rules as laid down by PRL .Both cases have brought PRL into disrepute. I know rules have been drawn up , probably differentiating the type of punishment, but to say the shares have no capital value is absolutely shite.  If they are to be taken back by PRL both clubs should receive payment . It’s a wonder Worcester owners didn’t approach CVC to buy their percentage.

My anger is firmly directed at the other premier rugby clubs over the handling of Wasps and Worcesters P share.

Quote from: DGP Wasp on October 12, 2022, 09:51:11 AM

Quote from: HDAWG on October 12, 2022, 09:31:36 AM

Can we talk about our problems without bringing up Saracens for once? I hate em as much as anyone, but for god's sake people, it's not relevant to our predicament.

Except it is.

Not really. Wasps are about £90m in debt. SOME of that will be us trying to match their level of wages, but in the main we let the players go, or failed to recruit a specific player and recruited a different one.

I would guess at least £80m of the debt is on us. Half for the stadium. Maybe more if you include the interest on the bonds. A lot of the rest was Covid. And it has been Covid that provided the tipping point, combined with the global economic effect of the war in Ukraine hitting costs and income. Oh, and the SISU shenanigans (I doubt that they ever paid us our costs, and maybe now the money we owe them for the pitch repairs).

Charlie was at 10 in The Telegraph's Team of the Week.