Salford Red Devils CEO confirms star player’s exit with hints of more to come

Salford Red Devils’ CEO Chris Irwin has confirmed another player exit whilst revealing that more are likely to come.

The Red Devils were finally able to celebrate a Super League win as they defeated Huddersfield Giants 23-10 but some bad news broke at half time when it was confirmed that star centre Tim Lafai has left the club.

CEO Chris Irwin spoke to BBC 5 Live Extra‘s Stuart Pyke to provide an update on the club’s financial situation and that saw him confirm Lafai’s departure, whilst Pyke himself also suggested that Nene Macdonald could also return to Australia.

Having talked about their restricted salary cap, Irwin said: “I see the need for that, the club was operating way above its costs, so that’s why we’ve seen the departures of Marc Sneyd, Brad Singleton and Tim Lafai going home.

“We’ve had to drop our overheads significantly, and we may need to continue to do that because of the situation that we’re in but as soon as we have some liquidity in our account, we can move out of the sanctions, and really kick on.”

Salford Red Devils CEO confirms star player’s exit with hints of more to come

He would then elaborate on Lafai’s departure and admit that the ‘stark reality’ is that more player exits could come following Marc Sneyd, Brad Singleton and Lafai.

Irwin stated: “That’s the stark reality of it, whilst we don’t want to lose any players, and we certainly didn’t want to lose the three that we had there. Tim’s reasons were family reasons, they’re in Australia and they’re settled with no chance of coming back so he was missing his family. As a family man myself, I get that.

“Losing Singleton this week and Sneyd last week is a big blow for us. Paul Rowley has built a wonderful group of players together, a really competitive squad that we’re hoping to do big things with this year. We’ve still got a Challenge Cup and I’m optimistic and I’m confident that we’ll get through this.”

Whilst that news is a major blow, he did confirm that some money has started to ‘trickle’ in although it is not the finances needed to alleviate any of the major problems.

Irwin confirmed: “We’re just about surviving at the moment but movement is happening now with the ownership group and a number of meetings with the City Council.

“We’ve had some in, they’ve started to trickle money through the week before last. They’ve paid some to Inland Revenue.

“It’s not the large funds that we wanted, so it’s put us all back probably six weeks. I had these grand plans to kick on but I’ll have to hold onto that a little bit. Unfortunately, we’ve still got the sustainability cap, which has made things really challenging.”

He also added: “I’ve been communicating with the players daily, and whilst it’s not been easy and I’ve been the bearer of bad news, I think with anything like that it’s about being honest and transparent and reassuring them that there is a bright future ahead of us.”