There was some major news for rugby league at the end of last week with the news that the government have helped with the survival of the sport with a £16 million loan that I am told comes with favourable repayment terms.

My first impression was that there would be grants available but this has been clarified and any money to clubs would also be passed on as loans. I have seen a number of comments bemoaning the fact that all the money would go to Super League and not the grass roots.

The reality is that Super League needs this money to pay the contractual wages of their staff.

Players have entered in to a contract and with it, like you are I, will have funded things like mortgages on the back of their income.

It would be wrong to say that just because they may earn a little more than the average man on the street that they are not entitled to a contractual wage.

It may be in future years that wages need to be adjusted as the full impact hits home but I am in strong agreement that contracts should be honoured.

For our own club we made an application last week to the COVID-19 job retention scheme to help pay our furloughed staff and we should receive that payment this week if the awards are processed in the timescale promised. The scheme is currently only due to last until the end of June and when it finishes we are presented with a whole new ball game in terms of financial challenges.

There is little doubt that a contact sport like rugby league will be one of the last activities to have the restrictions lifted, especially in front of a paying audience.

Until a vaccine has been produced I don’t think this will ever go away so we need to balance public safety over economics.

There is a tipping point. If we can get the death rates down to a manageable number and hopefully some drugs that give a better chance of survival then the economy just has to be switched back on. If the government continues to plunge itself in debt on a scale not seen since WW11 the health impacts will be felt for generations. Will the same people who currently take the moral high ground to new level of hysteria be willing to sacrifice the health care for generations to come through lack of funding? It’s a tough question to answer.

Back to our own club and the board meetings have taken on more of a planning air and as a result we have had some really good ideas around the future direction of the club.

Opening multiple income streams together with raising the profile of the club throughout the whole of Cumbria have been some of the things we have talked about. We also want to leave a legacy and without being specific we want to aim to improve our facilities one way or another. Hopefully this time for breathing space has been spent well.