Ryan Brierley believes Salford Red Devils must share some of the blame for the continuing financial turmoil affecting the Betfred Super League club.
The Red Devils remain under a £1.2million sustainability cap and are still having to sell players, with club captain Kallum Watkins departing last week, and Chris Atkin and Deon Cross expected to be the next ones to leave.
Repeated delays with wage payments to players and staff since a consortium was granted approval in February to take over Salford led to the restrictions being reimposed by the RFL, but skipper Brierley’s view is the current malaise has its genesis in longer-standing issues.
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“As much as there will be a lot of blame thrown at other people and other things, ultimately we’re the problem,” Brierley told Sky Sports’ The Bench podcast.
“We’ve made the errors – the club has made the errors and over the last four or five years, we’ve spent too much. We shouldn’t have done it.”
“We’ve been irresponsible and it’s far from ideal, but at the minute the only people who are being punished are the players [and staff], and I don’t like that.”
Brierley questioned whether the sustainability cap was having the desired effect, and revealed the likes of experienced prop Chris Hill had been playing recent games with a torn calf due to restrictions on who head coach Paul Rowley can select in his 17-man squads.
The Scotland international insisted he was determined to stay at Salford in the hope the situation will be resolved, with CEO Chris Irwin vowing last Thursday the long-promised money from the consortium will arrive soon.
Brierley rejected comparisons with the demise of his former club Toronto Wolfpack, who he played for from 2017-2019 and which collapsed amid the Covid-19 pandemic in 2020.
“Toronto was pretty much just a guy who was saying ‘I’m skint’, whereas this is like ‘We’re going to rip your soul out first, and at the end of it we still might not pay you’ – and God knows what will happen next,” Brierley said.
“It’s like death by a thousand cuts. What’s at the end of it, we don’t know.
“It’s probably the toughest moment of my career, but I do hold onto that one percent of the club being better for it and coming through it.”
