CARL FORSTER has described the takeover of North Wales Crusaders as “brilliant”.

The club recently announced it had reached an agreement with Elkaleh LLC of Dubai, United Arab Emirates, for the group to acquire a majority shareholding of Crusaders and this secured the necessary approval of the Rugby Football League.

Following an extensive range of talks, the club’s board of directors accepted an offer in principle from Elkaleh LLC’s owner Jamie Elkaleh.

Crusaders’ head coach Forster told CruCast: “Obviously, it’s brilliant for the club, isn’t it?

“Let’s be honest, we’ve been doing it real tough, probably since I’ve walked through the door and before me.

“The club’s always, you know, we’ve thrived in terms of the smarts in our recruitment, but our player pool’s always been real restricted in terms of the finances.

“It can only be positive news for the club.

“If Jamie comes in, the ambition, the finances behind him and, obviously, we’ve still got to recruit smart.

“What Crusaders won’t be is, we won’t be an Oldham, spending money on ex-Super League - no disrespect to those players, but we still want to have the identity that we have right now and we’re not going to go out there and just buy a league, so to speak, and have all this massive success.

“We still want to do it the right way. Build within structures at the club, still promoting young lads.

“We still want to get Welsh players in the team. So, we still want that identity.”

Forster has also been full of praise for the impact that’s been made by Chris Barratt.

It was Barratt who scored a last minute try to haul Cru level in their epic victory over Workington Town earlier this month and Forster has praised his hard-working ethic.

He told CruCast: “Since the Midlands game, I think he’s probably done 80 minutes every single week and... he doesn’t want to come off.

“There’s times in a game where I wish I could bring him off, because it would benefit him back end of the game, but he’s so important to us.

“He’s so important, especially without myself on the field.

“He’s our captain, he’s our leader and that try, if I could have put anyone to score that try, it would have been him, because I think he’s done it tough, especially this season.

“He’s done it tough and he just deserved that reward of that last-minute try.

“If you could have a team full of Chris Barratts, you wouldn’t do too wrong.”

Crusaders’ efforts to reach the end of season League One play-offs have been boosted by back-to-back triumphs, including last weekend’s comfortable 42-4 success at Newcastle Thunder.

Next up is Sunday’s trip south to tackle Cornwall and this match will now kick-off at the earlier 1pm time.

Sixth-placed North Wales are level on points with Midlands Hurricanes, who occupy fifth spot.