A leading Salford Red Devils fan group has called on the council to be proactive in appointing a new company to take charge of a phoenix club to preserve the city’s rugby league heritage.
Earlier this morning, Salford Red Devils Rugby League Club were wound up in the High Court over outstanding debts.
A winding-up order was made during a minute-long hearing in the specialist Insolvency and Companies Court, where the club were not represented in court.
The judge ruled that there was no recourse for the six-time top-flight champions, who were relegated from the Super League by their IMG ranking in October.
The ruling marks the end of 152 years of history and comes little more than a year after the club secured a 2024 play-off spot under the tutelage of former coach Paul Rowley.
In a statement available in full, here, Salford Red Devils supporters group The 1873 mourned the death of the club and called on the council to support efforts to form a phoenix organisation to safeguard the future of rugby league in the city.
They said: “Today marks a new low in the long and storied history of Rugby in Salford.
“The legal entity that carried our badge, our players and our dreams through some of the sport’s most memorable nights has now been ended.
“The name may have been written off the Companies Register – but the club, the spirit and the soul of Salford Rugby League have not.
“Rebirth is not an easy process. It takes honesty, hard work and humility. It requires learning from what has gone wrong – secrecy, short-term thinking and decisions made in boardrooms far away from the people who matter most.
“We call on Salford Council and the RFL to work jointly, and constructively to appoint a ‘newco’ to take on the tenancy of the stadium and assume the membership left behind by the liquidation of Salford City Reds (2023) Limited. This action must take place in the coming days.”
The 2026 Championship fixtures were announced yesterday, with Salford Red Devils scheduled to begin the season against Oldham RLFC on 16 January.
The 1873 said that “any delays in the decision-making process will significantly hamper the possibility of a Salford club making the start line.”
Lawyers representing HM Revenue and Customs applied for a winding-up order, filed in May, over £500,000 to £600,000 of unpaid tax. Salford Red Devils were granted adjournments in June, September, October and November before they were liquidated at the fifth time of asking today (3 December 2025).
In October, Salford were granted a third adjournment after the club’s lawyers said “more than adequate” funding had become available to pay creditors and settle the matter “promptly.” Owners’ claims that sufficient financing had been “formally secured” were bogus.
Given that a £3 million bridging loan never materialised, promised funding was not secured, and HMRC debts had risen during the six months since the petition was first filed, the judge ruled there was no option but to wind up the Salford Red Devils.
This was a final nail in the coffin after a tumultuous Super League season, which began with the club being beaten 82-0 by St Helens in a competition record defeat where salary cap rulings limited the selection of senior players who had starred in the club’s impressive previous campaign.
The club’s takeover on the eve of the season by a consortium led by Swiss businessman Dario Berta proved an agonising false dawn, with the new regime repeatedly missing player and staff wages payments throughout the season.
It was these same owners who said that Salford Red Devils would not close as a result of financial troubles in the aftermath of the first adjournment; the ones who were at the helm when chief operating officer Claire Bradbury resigned, alleging someone asked her to “sleep with someone at the Rugby Football League to smooth things over.”
Following a mass exodus of first-team players, including former captain Ryan Brierley and prop Jack Ormondroyd, Salford failed to fulfil a fixture against Wakefield Trinity because of welfare concerns, as the coach Rowley was forced to choose from a youthful playing squad containing just available senior options.
At the start of September, Salford Red Devils assistant coach Kurt Haggerty, who had agreed to take the reins with Rowley expected to move into a director role at the end of the season, left the club by mutual consent, derailing the succession plan drawn up under more auspicious conditions.
Rowley, forever a legend to Salford fans for his unwavering commitment to the club during such adversity, departed on 17 October to take up a vacant head coaching role at St Helens.
This followed confirmation that the financially troubled club would be relegated from the Super League for the first time in 17 years. After receiving a B grade, Salford were ranked 15th, three places outside the top 12 required to retain a Super League spot.
Initially founded by the boys of Cavendish Street Chapel in Hulme in 1973, the club first competed under the city’s name as Salford Football Club in 1879, before becoming Salford Rugby League Club and then Salford City Reds.
After winning their second of six Rugby League Championships in 1933, Salford toured France, where journalists nicknamed them ‘Les Diables Rouges’ – The Red Devils. They officially adopted this name at the start of the 2013-14 Super League season.
Salford spent 110 years at their iconic Willows ground before moving to the Salford Community Stadium in 2012, where they competed in the Super League for 17 consecutive years and reached the 2019 Grand Final, before a series of financial problems led to relegation in September and, today, the club’s closure.
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