Potential buyer close to deal to secure Warriors

Richard Fale has agreed a conditional price for the Warriors and could take ownership of the club by next Friday.

In a revealing interview with Glen Larmer on Trackside Radio yesterday morning, Fale, the Hawaiian-based businessman, said he had agreed a price with current Warriors owner Eric Watson for the club, subject to the numbers stacking up.

Fale said he and his team would be crunching those figures over the next few days and by Friday he’ll know if he’ll go ahead with the purchase and will sign the documents the following Friday.

‘‘We’re really close,’’ Fale told Trackside Radio.

‘‘We’re here with boots on the ground to do a verification of all the numbers and verify everything we’ve been communicating about, which we’ve occurred primarily over the telephone and email.

‘‘We’ve brought our mergers and acquisition specialist over from New York City and he’s going to take a blow torch and sledge hammer to everything, to make sure everything’s panning out the way we think it is and then we’ll take it forward from there.’’

Asked how optimistic he was that he’d soon be owner of the Warriors, Fale said he was ‘‘very confident’’.

‘‘Everything we’ve come across so far hasn’t given us that indication, so everything’s looking really good,’’ he said.

It has been reported that the price of the Warriors would be around $24 million and that doesn’t appear to be an issue for Fale and his consortium.

‘‘It’s contingent on all of the work we’re going to be doing here on the ground,’’ he said.

‘‘Once that’s completed we’ll have that all set in stone.

‘‘The extent to how these numbers speak to us over the next few days are going to be absolutely critical,’’ he added.

‘‘Everything we’ve looked at so far, indicates we’re in a great spot. But we could find something out today or tomorrow.’’

Although Fale has spoken in the past about the possibility of bringing in Craig Bellamy as coach, he said he would want to stick with the Stephen Kearney’s current coaching regime, to see if the hard work put in over the off-season turns around the club’s fortunes.

‘‘We don’t pretend to be subject matter experts in the game of rugby league itself,’’ Fale said.

‘‘So we’re going to essentially allow the seeds that have been planted to bear fruit.

‘‘It was a fantastic game last week [against the Rabbitohs, winning 32-20] and I’m looking forward to seeing what the performance is going to be like this Saturday.

‘‘Our primary focus of subject matter is the front office and commercial segment of the organisation.

‘‘That’s where we’re looking to engage ourselves after the acquisition.

‘‘These guys need to understand that they’re going to be empowered to carry out and see through all the hard work they’ve put in,’’ he added.

‘‘It seems like they’ve started off on the right foot and you’ve got to give these guys a chance to deliver on all of their hard work, you can’t step in and rob them of that opportunity.’’

So while Kearney appears safe, Fale was less committal about the future of chief executive Cameron George, who took over the job from Jim Doyle late last year.

‘‘We do our assessment as we go along and we’re pushing through all of those numbers they have there in the front office and we make our assessments,’’ he said when asked about Doyle.

‘‘We’re a data driven organisation and we’re going to let the numbers and data speak for itself.

‘‘He’s also new to the organisation as well, so we’re not going to prejudge him until we’ve processed all of that information.’’