The wife of the Salford owner has put in a bid to buy Bradford. Could this be that Dr Koukash has devised a cunning plot to get his Marquee Player Plan accepted. IF YOU CAN'T BEAT 'EM BUY 'EM.

This can only be good for the game IMO. Maybe if he also buys up Wakey, Cas and London we can actually start running the league in a progressive manner and think about closing the gap on the NRL!

Not too sure it's a good idea. There's a lot of people, The Dr included, who've complained about the Hetherington's influence on the league. This would just be the same thing really and whilst it would give more power to 'the rebels', who's to say that they will always be putting propositions forward that we agree with??

Now we need IL's son/daughter/dog/cat to buy the Bronco's

If this did go through it would change the voting balance of power in Super League.
I hope they are the winning bid and Bradford can get some investment into the club and their fans have a top class team to support.

His (and presumably his wife's) interests are in removing restrictions so top players can be bought in who put bums on seats. IL, conversely, has actually spoke out against raising the salary cap before IIRC, and why wouldn't he? We compete for trophies every year and get good crowds, both seemingly regardless of us losing some of our best players to the NRL every year. He knows that we'll get make money off the sale of these players, talented youngsters and the odd bargain will come in and replace them, we'll still be there or thereabouts and the fans will keep turning up.

However, for us fans I think it would be far better if the cap was raised, marquee players exempt etc because it allows us to watch the very best players in the competition every week. IL couldn't sit happily knowing he can sell our best because he would have a big concern about other clubs overtaking us. We may even get to the situation where players aren't as keen to leave if they get a decent wage and strong competition here. You could argue the little clubs will get left behind but that seems to happen anyway, at least they could pick up better quality cast-offs from the big clubs and if they go bump they'll be a better investment opportunity if investors see they can come in, buy a good team and become competitive fairly quickly.

Neither Kath nor Gary Hethrington own Wakefield or Leeds. Both are only employees of the clubs.

But they are the people who influence the votes for their clubs. Effectively the Hetherington family have two votes at every meeting. 3 if you count the family member they have at Widnes. Koukash will now end up with 2 votes too and whilst that works in our favour for the time being, it may work against us further down the line. It's more or less the same as IL having Wigan and London, which he wasn't allowed to do under the RFL's operating rules.

I agree but if the doctor was in Hetherington's camp on major issues there'd be a lot of people on here saying how unfair it is that a family can own two clubs. It's more or less the same as IL owning London and Wigan and that wasn't allowed.

Whilst I think it will benefit us in the short term, I think it's a bad idea overall.

Michael Carter has the vote for Wakefield, Kath is just a consultant.

Whats wierd about this conspiracy and Koukash needing to 'buy' another vote to get his marquee proposal through because of the Hetheringtons, is that Gary Hetherington made the same proposal for the last couple of years, and voted for it this time, Michael Carter for Wakefield voted the other way.

There does need to be a shake up of the organisation of the game, I'm still not sure about the good doctor (& now his missus) though and I agree that the SC needs to go up. But be careful what you wish for: who's going to pay for an increase in players' wages? It certainly won't be the chairmen.

Of course it would partly be the chairmen. Having said that, would you not be willing to pay more money to see better players? I know I would. We get a damn good deal for our ticket price and the countless deals they put on