The stain on Super League

The Crusaders were the English Super League’s bright spark for a short time, an expansion dream flickering briefly with promise but ultimately revealed as a mirage.

Three years after their sad demise, five years after the problems first started, four Australian ex-Crusaders players are still owed money and the mismanagement surrounding the episode has damaged lives.

It began with so much hope.

The founding of a Welsh professional rugby league club began in 2005 in Bridgend with the goal of joining the UK’s Super League four years later. Starting off in the National League Two competition in 2006, the then-titled Celtic Crusaders were promoted into National League One as champions for the 2008 season.

They reached the grand final that season, going down to Salford 36-18, but were admitted to Super League the following year and given a three-year license.

History was being made. Sponsors were enticed and players from the NRL were signed. Expectations were high.

A three-week training camp was held in Queensland. The likes of former State of Origin representatives Josh Hannay and Ryan O’Hara, along with Mark Bryant, Adam Peek, Lincoln Withers and Papua New Guinean international Jason Chan arrived from down under as the preparation for 2009, the Crusaders’ first season in Super League, kicked off.

“I moved to the Crusaders as I wanted to try the English Super League,” Bryant, a former Raiders and Sea Eagles front-rower, remembers.

“I had just had a very successful time with Manly and wanted to go to a smaller team to help them to become a winning side. Every person that I talked to, the coaches, the CEO etc, had big aspirations for rugby league in Wales. The team had had a few successful years and they wanted to become a force in the south and more importantly be the first Welsh Super League team.”

It didn’t take long for the hopes and dreams to start to crumble.

The Crusaders struggled on the field, taking 13 matches to finally record their first win. They would only gain two more victories that entire season, finishing 14th out of 14 teams. Things weren’t going any better off the field.

Chief executive David Thompson stepped down, replaced by Mike Turner, and in July 2009 it was announced that the club was to be investigated over player visas.

It was revealed the Crusaders had violated the visa laws and six players, illegally in Britain, had their contracts terminated as rumours of the club’s financial problems began to grow.

Owner Leighton Samuels publicly denied there were financial issues, but in December he was gone along with head coach John Dixon. In came former Great Britain coach Brian Noble and Iestyn Harris, and Samuels sold his share in the Crusaders to Geoff Moss of Wrexham FC.

It was then revealed that the club would change its name, dropping the ‘Celtic’ moniker to become simply the ‘Crusaders’, and it would be moving north to be based in Wrexham. The nightmare was only starting to unfold.

“The problems started when we were in camp [at the end of 2008] and some of the boys were told by club that they will have trouble with their visa,” Peek, who had 12 years playing in the NRL, says.

“We meet the CEO and the accountant and discussed our pension contributions and were told it was all OK and we would get someone to help set it up.

“Steve Mills the accountant and David Thompson soon quit, as we now believe they knew that Leighton was going to stop putting cash in and use the money set aside by the Australian players to pay others. Our wages were paid late on at least eight occasions, we had to pay to use a local gym, to buy supplements, even pay 50 pound each to play in Magic Weekend.”

In 2009 several of the antipodean Crusaders players were told that part of their salaries would be held over for them as part of an off-shore pension scheme, and they would receive the payment when they returned to Australia.

This never happened.

With the club now in the hands of new owners in Moss and Ian Roberts at the end of the year, who took the debt on and guaranteed to pay the outstanding pension money, things appeared to be getting a little better. They did not.

While the Crusaders spent up big on its squad – bringing in Michael Witt, Nick Youngquest, Jarrod Sammut, Weller Hauraki and Frank Winterstein from overseas, as well as Welsh rugby international Gareth Thomas, and managed to reach the Super League play-offs in 2010 – off the park the problems grew and grew.

In November the club was placed into administration and governing body the Rugby Football League (RFL) guaranteed that the players would be paid the money they were owed.

The players union, the GMB, has been involved in this case for several years. Geoff Burrow, Sports Branch Secretary of the GMB, says Leighton Samuels deceived the Crusaders players and when the North Wales owners gained control of the club, on the basis that they’d take on the debts, it “looked like a new dawn. Everyone was hoping for a new dawn. Then the same thing happened again. It was like groundhog day.”

Time after time the players were told that they would receive their money and that things would be sorted out. The messages from the governing body were positive.

The GMB negotiated a deal with the RFL so that 10,000 pounds a month from the Crusaders’ Super League funding would go to the players while the club was in the competition.

“The RFL at the time [also] agreed to put 30,000 pounds as a gesture into the pot,” Burrow says. “Overall 150,000 pounds was paid into the owed pension monies.”

The Crusaders took to the field in 2011 starting with a six-point deduction as an administration penalty. Noble had departed, with Harris taking the reins as head coach, but the club could only manage four wins from the first 20 games. The writing was on the wall.

Then in July came the bombshell.

The Crusaders withdrew their application for a Super League license for the next three years, citing financial problems. 2011 would be the team’s final season.

The Crusaders picked up just two victories in their remaining matches, finishing last on the table. At the end of the season they were wound up and became part of history.

The payment plan, which had seen around a third of the money owed to the players paid back to them, was stopped.

“I spoke to lawyers and was advised we would be very unlucky to get the money back as the club went under,” Burrow says.

“Then the RFL suggested we both start a joint legal case against the club, which I thought was a bit strange. We believe the RLF was complicit in what was going on at both South and North Wales.”

Negotiations between the affected players, the GMB and the RFL has continued for the past few years years. According to Burrow, the RFL declined to pay the remaining 290,000 pounds of outstanding money unless all of the Super League clubs agreed to it. The GMB asked to make a presentation to the other clubs, but the RFL has refused this on the basis that the players may take legal action against them.

“The players don’t deserve this final straw,” Burrow says. “It won’t do the game here and overseas any good. I’ve approached some of the Super League clubs individually. They have seemed to suggest it could be sorted out.”

Peek is owed 50,000 pounds and believes the original payment plan was a way of keeping those players out on the field.

“Thinking we would be going to get it all. Moss and Roberts owed the ground and charged rent and got the gate. The RFL have handled this poorly from day one and they know that. It’s happened way too many times and I am pissed off that it happened to me, but someone should be held accountable. The reason they don’t want us to front the Super League clubs, as the real story will come out on how they kept club afloat for three years.”

Three years on from the end of the Crusaders and little has changed.

Bryant, Peek, Withers and O’Hara are still owed their money and are still fighting to get it back. So far they have had little luck.

Top-flight rugby league in Wales has faded and the nation’s performance in last year’s rugby league World Cup was a dismal failure.

A new club, the North Wales Crusaders, has arisen from the ashes of the Celtic Crusaders in Wrexham and was promoted into the Championship at the start of 2014. Run by different owners and set up by fans, it appears to be on sure footing and building a sustainable entity, but this has come as cold comfort to the four Australian players who are still to receive what they’re owed.

At the end of 2013 Bryant retired after two seasons with the London Broncos in Super League . The 33-year old now lives in Sydney and works in real estate, assisting with the coaching of Manly’s Under-18s team and serving as a member of the NSWL Rugy League’s Judiciary panel.

“The stress that this has caused my family and I is huge. In a time when we should have been enjoying the early years of our children’s lives we were busy talking and arguing about money.

“Anti-depressants, counselling you name it we have done it. And I know that the stress of this was a factor in my wife’s cancer. This is why I retired early. The way that the game is run and the bad taste that has been left in my mouth from all of this just won’t go away. We have been let down time after time and all the while continued to be nothing but professionals and help grow the game in Wales.”

After leaving the Crusaders at the end of 2011, Peek returned to Australia and he now works with the NRL as an ambassador and mentor part-time, and on Sydney’s wharfs full-time.

“I had to seek counselling and medication, not to mention alcohol abuse. I was suffering depression. Looking back it affected me big time. It’s also affected my wife as well.”

The Crusaders might have gone and some of those involved have been punished, admittedly for others’ crimes, but for the players involved the nightmare lingers. They have received little help from the RFL, the NRL or other rugby league bodies. The RFL declined to comment when approached.

David Thompson, who served as CEO of the Crusaders until February 2009, denies any knowledge of the missing money to players.

“I believe that some of the payers used a company called Herald Trust to receive payments for image rights,” Thompson said.

“I don’t recall any of the due payments not being made while I was at the club. I am not aware of any money being ‘set aside’ for Australian players, let alone that money being used to pay others. Many people invested significant time, money, and effort into the club, so the club ‘folding’ is extremely saddening.”

Former Crusaders owner Leighton Samuel, who sold the club on to Wrexham Village Limited at the end of 2009, says new owners took on all the debts including the overseas pension money owed to players, a deal approved and overseen by the RFL.

“While I have a great deal of sympathy with the players they did, at the time, endorse the transaction/transfer and took comfort in the assumption that Wrexham Village Limited, the new owners, were financially secure and would develop and grow the ‘franchise’ and would honour the commitments made.”

Samuels denies deceiving any players and claims he was not involved in the day-to-day running of the club at the time.

“I was a director and that was piling 50,000 pounds a month into the business that was not making ends meet.”

Samuels says the players should be going after the directors of Wrexham Village for money owed and not him: “The club was just never, never going to work. It’s sad.”

The common perception of many seems to be that rugby league players are very well paid and could easily survive the loss of 50,000 pounds. That it’s a case of easy come, easy go.

But there is a big difference in salaries from the top level stars to the everyday NRL or Super League first-grader and, regardless, that view ignores the fact that these players are human beings and worked hard to earn that money. It is rightfully theirs.

Rugby league is an extremely tough sport and a player’s career can be over in a second. They put their bodies and their health on the line every time they can take to their field. No player, regardless of experience or nationality, deserves to be treated the way the Crusaders’ Aussie quartet has.

“It’s disappointing that you bust your body for years to save enough money for your family to build a life from and it’s all for nothing,” O’Hara, who had eight years in the NRL with the Raiders and Wests Tigers, says.

With the Wakefield Wildcats struggling financially, the London Broncos a laughing stock and the Bradford Bulls’ problems well documented, not to mention total crowd attendances dropping cross the competition in 2014, Super League needs another drama like a hole in the head.

But the Crusaders’ debacle continues to linger and remains a stain on all involved at the elite level of British rugby league. It also stands as a cautionary tale for the countless number of Australian players who move to the UK for the sport they love.

Every season Aussies head north to play in the Super League and Championship, seeking employment but also adding value. The affect on the game without these players would be large.

As legal action may be the next step, Burrow hopes the situation can be resolved without heading to the courts: “The player’s aren’t asking for any interest, just what they’re owed. They’ve worked hard. I just think they deserve what the British game owes them and what they should have.”

Follow John Davidson on Twitter @johnnyddavidson