Salford Red Devils CEO speaks out on player exits, March pay, Marc Sneyd and ownership funds

Salford Red Devils chief executive Chris Irwin expects the club’s financial issues to rumble on into April as they wait for ownership funds to arrive. A takeover deal was struck in February that seemed to assure the future of the club with Dario Berta fronting up an overseas consortium.

The hope was that after an off-season of uncertainty and difficulty, the takeover would allow Salford to move forward with peace of mind. However, the funds needed have not arrived with the club stressing difficulties around the transfer of money between countries.

To make matters worse payroll obligations were not met at the end of the last month, with the players going unpaid for a week before eventually seeing money land in their bank accounts. Such uncertainty has led to concern and discontent at the Salford Community Stadium among the playing group.

Irwin has moved to ease fears of March’s pay, with the CEO stating his belief that the club are in position to pay wages later this month. But, he believes it could be some time before the funds that are required to get Salford back on track.

“It’s been a very difficult period since I took over,” Irwin told BBC Radio Manchester before Friday night’s Challenge Cup clash with Bradford Bulls. “The first week with all the excitement of the new investors and then we got hit with money transfer issues through international money laundering and £1.9 million was sent over to our account and then bounced back to an account in Australia, which put us back under the sustainability cap.

“It’s been a really tough four weeks for me but we’re still fighting and we’re still confident that we’ll come out of this well.

“In terms of the large funds that we’re hoping to come over that will really elevate the club and kick the club on, we’re going to be waiting for those funds a bit longer than we’d hoped for. However, through March and March pay, we’ll be fine with that.

“Come April we hope the large funds come into the club and we can really kick on and perform on the pitch and off the pitch as well.”

Asked if reports the RFL had paid wages in March were true, Irwin said: “A bit of both to be honest. There was a shortfall in the money that was coming from overseas they could only do it in small chunks so we did request central distribution a week early.”

Salford’s financial difficulties were eased slightly this week by the sale of star half-back Marc Sneyd to Warrington Wolves. The Red Devils picked up an undisclosed fee for Sneyd and with his wages off the bill, too, they were able to at least name a 17-man squad for the Bulls clash, while remaining compliant with the sustainability cap.

Since Sneyd’s exit there has been plenty of speculation about more players leaving Salford and while Irwin says the Red Devils will fight to keep the remainder of their squad intact, the CEO failed to rule out more exits.

“There’s been a uncertainty with the playing group and staff, not just the past four weeks but for a number of months,” he added. “I think with the ownership coming in it gave the players that confidence that things were going to be good and then the last couple of weeks and turbulence, with funds not landing, have made players start to worry and question things.

“That’s not good for anybody and that’s the same for all our staff. It’s a huge blow to lose Sneyd, he’s a great player, a great bloke and he’s been a fantastic servant for Salford Red Devils.

“It’s a huge shame to lose him and we’ll fight to keep as many of those players with us as we can. We are under the £1.2m restrictions which causes us massive issues and we’re going to have be really on that cap to get us through the next few weeks.

“There’s a lot of things that myself and the coaching team need to look at to see how we manage all of that.”