We will rebuild? Step taken to create new rugby company as Reds’ creditors meet

Wednesday 25 October 2023


A new company linked to the Jersey Rugby Football Club is in the early stages of development, it has emerged, as creditors of the Jersey Reds met this morning.

It emerged that the local rugby club had ceased trading and were on the brink of liquidation, having failed to pay September salaries, in a shock announcement at the end of last month.

After the rejection of Deputy Lyndon Farnham's emergency rescue bid and the lack of a "White Knight", the Reds said they had "no option" but to move into liquidation.

Pictured: Chair Mark Morgan (right) described it as a "very sad day" as the local rugby club ceased trading. (Jersey Reds)

Express has now learnt that, one day before the start of the liquidation process was officially announced, the first step was taken to register a new company, with the name ‘Jersey Rugby Football Club (2023) Limited’ officially reserved with the JFSC.

The Reds' liquidation comes at the end of long history of financial troubles dating back to 2016, when cumulative losses made it necessary to raise £1.5million through a sale-and-leaseback agreement covering the club’s assets.

Amid continuing struggles, compounded by RFU funding cuts, it was decided at an Extraordinary General Meeting in 2022 to separate the professional arm of the club from the amateur one.

Company filings unearthed by Express show that Jersey Rugby Football Club (2016) Trading Limited – the company now in liquidation – was threatened with strike-off action by the JFSC in June 2023.

Pictured: Lewis Wynne with the Championship Trophy during the Reds’ open-top bus parade on Liberation Day.

On 30 June 2023, the Registrar of Companies, Julian Lamb, wrote to the club to give them official notice that "the company may be struck off the register and dissolved without further legal process at the end of three months from the date of this notice". That would have taken the company up to the end of September.

"If a company is struck off and dissolved, each director and shareholder of the company will continue to be subject to any liabilities which applied before the company was dissolved and those liabilities may be enforced against that director or shareholder as if the company had not been dissolved," the letter added. 

Pictured: The letter dated 30 June 2023 about the company's missed deadline for its annual confirmation statement.

This morning's creditors' meeting took place at St Paul's Centre at 10:30. Only people with a "valid claim" against the company were allowed to attend.

Attendees were set to be read a statement on the company's position before and the people nominated to be joint liquidators – Alan John Roberts and James Richard Pirie of Grant Thornton Limited – were to be proposed.