£16 million loan is not for players, says Robert Elstone

Super League CEO Robert Elstone has clarified that the £16 million pound loan from the Government will not be used on players’ wages.

The cash injection was confirmed last week and will primarily be used to help clubs survive as they inevitably lose income as a result of the Covid-19 crisis.

There has been speculation about how the money will be spent and how it will be split, however it has been confirmed that it will not be used on players and staff who have taken pay cuts to help ease their respective clubs’ financial strain.

Speaking on the Golden Point Daily vodcast, Elstone stressed that the money will be used to subsidise clubs’ estimated losses and that any talk of a strike from players, who may not return to their full wages as soon as the season resumes, should be well-thought out first.

“It’s a request for funding that has been based on an estimate of what that loss might be,” Elstone told the Golden Point Daily vodcast. “I have no idea if there is reality in a strike. That does nobody any good.

“I would say the solution is one that has to be collaborative, that everybody in the game has to share in some of the pain that’s being felt.

“Myself and my colleagues, the RFL, club executives are all taking reductions in pay and everybody is going to have to do that.

“One of the big liabilities – and absolutely rightly so – is players’ wages. So the owners are going to have to look and deal with that on a local basis.

“It’s critical that we keep the players engaged, we keep the players with us. I’ve said this from day one that this sport is 100 per cent about the players that go and do this every week and I’ve got nothing but total respect for them in that context.”