Super League and St Helens legend James Graham has ripped into the current state of the competition, and how the ongoing situation at Salford Red Devils is “embarrassing to the game”. 

The two-time Grand Final winner took to his podcast, The Bye Round, to make his feelings clear on the competition he played over 200 games in.  

Graham blasted the current problems at Salford, and how they have been allowed to get into such a mess.  

“The situation at Salford is absolutely disgusting at the moment,” he said. “The way their fans have been treated, their players have been treated is just not on.” 

“It’s just embarrassing to the game over there that this has been allowed to happen. There are fingers to point at the club management of Salford and there’s fingers to point at the game administration that they’ve enabled this.” 

St Helens legend believes Super League is “governed by self-interest” 

“I’ve just got no idea where Super League go from here,” said the 39-year-old. “There is a conflict of sporting culture of promotion and relegation, there’s obviously a lot of history there with teams that are no longer in the top flight that want access to at least be able to strive for top flight. 

“Here in the NRL that doesn’t happen. In America, it doesn’t happen. They are franchise-based models.” 

Graham believes that Super League should keep the NRL model, and stop giving too much control to the clubs that are only out for themselves and not the good of the game. 

“My observations in Super League, the plans just continue to change and revert back to the old. Unfortunately, I feel there’s a lot of government by self-interest. 

“In terms of growth of the game and what the Catalans Dragons bring to the competition, they should be in. But, there’s a lot of club owners that don’t want them in because they don’t bring any fans. They’d prefer a York or a Bradford that may bring 1,000-2,000 fans as opposed to Catalans that bring 50, and it’s like ‘really?’” 

The ex-England international, and his co-host Charlie White, both seemed confident that the two new Super League teams would be Bradford Bulls and York Knights, with White questioning how and why those teams seem to have been chosen and why so late on.

White argued: “It’s like playing fantasy sports and you’re mate calls you up and says ‘we’re adding two more guys to the comp’. It’s like they [Super League clubs] didn’t even know they were doing that [voting on expansion].

“The fact it’s Bradford and York, there’s a reason that happened.”

Graham replied: “Toulouse, in terms of what they bring to that comp, they’re a full time team at the moment. It’s about establishing a roster. It’s like ‘are you ready for Super League?’

“Sean Long at Oldham, he’s going ‘yeah, I think we can’, Toulouse will be the same, Bradford, York, but we’re in mid-August and they’ve not made a call.”