One theory is that this whole narrative has been a red herring to get additional funding to contribute to attaining the stadium. Very hard to differentiate between truth n lies at the moment.

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Well what’s going to happen to the Shay is still high on the councils get rid list and we’ll soon find out if anyone is going to make a move for it.

There’s been a lot of shouting about this on PFFB by one group in particular, if turns out to be true then we’re sure to hear about it and their vindication of being right all along but equally if false it’ll be hard to live down all the accusations made and the manner / intensity they were made in and as we all know there’s a football club that plays there and whatever else it’s used for whoever gets it has to guarantee it still remains a sports ground.

The fact is by their own admission that the council want rid of the shay and the rest is speculation wading through rivers of rumours.

Gareth dean ( still a shareholder I believe) is adamant that Ian utterly is trying to acquire the shay with ‘ friends’ and subsidies it with his event organising connections.

I’ve heard this rumour for a while and even posted something similar on the football forum and was subsequently ridiculed and then banned several times for suggesting this .

I believe there is some truth in this just not sure how much .

I believed that Ian Uttley had walked away and with him been the only person with the financial clout to do anything with the Shay you would think that would be it. Given his daughter is all over FB now asking fans for calm and to support the board you have to think he must be still involved in some capacity which again could make the Shay rumor more believable. Gareth Deam must be a pain in the boards backside as from a legal point of view with him been the major shareholder, the board have legal requirements to provide information to him and he has been very clear in his thoughts from really early in the new boards term. I cant see how we can have any trust in this board.

Glad you've averted disaster for now. What next is the question to ask. How is the club fixed to be able to pay salaries and not be in this position again?

On the ground front if the Shay isn't doable anymore is there any land on the Fax/Bradford border (Hipperholme/Wyke or Shelf/Northowran that would be suitable for a new ground for us both to share? Perhaps both clubs and councils could look at this possibility? Perhaps the councils could raise enough money from sales of Shay and Odsal to provide something more modern/suitable that has a sustainable future for both clubs and the surrounding communities? Perhaps it would make longer term financial sense? Make it suitable for championship rugby but with the scope to expand to meet SL standards if needed. We'd have to make the seats a neutral colour



Just a thought.

After all the opening pomp and ceremony, this BOD nearly bankrupted the club within 2 years. I can't trust them to run the club, and after this "sudden" massive debt bombshell one has to wonder if they know what they're doing. As Sidney Young Blood once sang, it's now a case of "Sit and Wait".

Based on the data you kindly shared on the other thread, the sharp shift in our results in 2022 would suggest the writing was on the wall and the last board were probably happy to get shut, especially with the state and direction of the game and the championship in particular. Why did it get so bad so quickly, was that solely that years trading performance or some movement of liabilities. Despite the insistence of Mr Dean, was the scale of the financial state back then fully know to the new board.

Sorry I don't buy into some of the "allegations" thrown around and its obvious there is no love lost between some people. I believe both the past and present boards have wanted to create a successful Halifax RFC. Have they underestimated the task, clearly yes. But the landscape has changed, little chance of reward for success, loss of the middle eights which brought additional revenue and fans clearly walking away effecting attendances across the championship clubs.

A lot of the fans complaining about the state of our finances are generally the same ones moaning about the quality of our signings.

Gareth Dean ( wasn’t he deliveree ) is saying his motive is to save the club, is he in a position to do so, what is his financial status, record of running a business and / a rugby club and can he be trusted.

Lee Kenny by his own admission is here as a interim stop gap, Ian Uttley took a step back with current involvement unknown and the rest have already walked away so would there be much resistance to someone coming in?

Gareth dean is a prime example of ‘ people in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones’ especially when you’re thousands of miles away . However some of his ideas merit consideration.

Right, so to illustrate it’s like me saying another cowboy dealer has sold you a dodgy car when previously i’d done the same thing and when you called me out to fix it my own vehicle had broken down on route.

Pretty much .

Obviously we all discussed it on here at great length if I remember rightly, but the writing should really have been on the wall for a lot of our fans when we got the lowest financial score out of all the teams that announced their grading scores.

I wouldn't trust Gareth Dean for reasons stated above but lets face it, if he had handed over his shares like everyone else did there is a lot of goings on that we would have been non the wiser about. I think the BOD only informed us about some more details when it looked a lost cause especially when you see the date the club was informed of the winding up order and we still had Lee Kenny telling us things were looking up after that date.

We need a bit of luck who comes in next.

Looking at time lines seem to indicate that in between Lee Kenny saying things were looking okay to the cry for help was the TicketPass demise and not getting a promised 6 figure sum.

Most have assumed that there was a connection which seems reasonable but also how it wouldn’t be reasonable to think the TicketPass sponsorship would come to that amount.

Now if that was the case it may well dispel another assumption that the 6 figure sum was only connected to just one sponsor which actually no one did say that, so was there a change of mind from someone else leading to a double whammy?

Was it even TicketPass who let us down as they we’re still selling our tickets up to last Sunday’s game and it was someone else completely?

The club have never named names of failures when this has happened in the past for at least moral reasons and causing further embarrassment and aren’t likely to.

As before we’ll likely never know with the moral being, we can’t trust anyone including our own assumptions if recent experiences are anything to go by.

Ah Mark Moore a name from the past - he was the guy who weighed in our speedway track crash barriers for scrap money!

Blimey is it the same bloke from Beds r uz or whatever it was called? Tried to buy the club with its own money IIRC and it all fell through. A real low point.

Don’t know him personally and was neither championing him or otherwise, only mentioned him answering another post that said we had short memories and needed to remember what had happened to the Bradford’s fans donations.

My reply was we were all well aware of what had happened at Bradford and certainly Mark Moore was as he had mentioned it and from what you say he would be.

Things got a bit clearer/more muddied depending which way you look at it this morning. Gareth Dean it turns out has a 19% holding of the total shares and is willing to sell these and give anything he makes on top of his original outlay (approx 30k) back to the club. He says he will accept 40p per share which is what he paid for them but unless I am missing something there is no way that anyone in their right mind is going to pay 40p per share for something that was almost worthless just a couple of days back. In reality even as low as 5p a share seems a bit of a reach.

Is this a bad take or am I completley losing my mind as to what is going on here?

No, looking at the time lines that happened much much earlier.

Where have you got that info from GFB?

On the Facebook forum. Can't get my head around it. He said himself that he would not give up his shares previously because the financial situation was not as bad as the board made out but now when we were within hours of going out of business he feels the shares are still worth what he paid for them.

Just seem this thread and read it through. You all are more in the know than Bongser, but let it be said that no GENUINE RL fan wants to see an historic club go to the wall (whup their asses on the field yes, but not the former). All the best for a/the future.

Not sure I can get my head around all this, might have to join Hudds/Shay and sink a few. Firstly, Fax have been in dire financial trouble, the current BoD turned a bind eye( if ever both were open and focused) over several months, then face a winding up order from HMRC, put out a plea for financial help, gather a few grand together, hey presto enough to have a stay of execution, monies offered then withdrawn. Secondly Shareholder(s)wanting to cash in their share and expecting at least as much as they paid for them, are we in Wayne’s World? No real explanation I have seen from BoD as to just what is happening, if they need help transparency has to be paramount. Thank you to those on here who have given an insight as to goings on trying to explain to the rest of us what is fact or fiction. Finally previous BoD members names are banded around giving their view, (unless I have misread/ misunderstood which is quite probable) and do Directors have to ‘pass’ Due Diligence or can any one say I have a few quid to throw into the pot and are welcomed with open arms?

I think (and this is a personal opinion) the troubles are far from over, I understand that while the HMRC bill has been settled, wages are still not fully paid. And we're now almost half way through another month so another payday looms in a few weeks. The HMRC bill may have been a quarterly VAT bill or similar.

The figure of £130-150k to get to the end of the season was mentioned. Still a lot of money to be found. Especially when we have 1 home game left and limited income. Season ticket sales will likely be down because of how this season has gone, and the expectation that the playing budget will be cut further meaning a mediocre season next season as well.

As for due diligence on people, the RFL have a "fit and proper persons test". Although the only person I have ever seen named publicly as failing it was that Ryan Whitcut who was at Bradford when Omar Khan owned it and tried to move it onto him. Quite what the test involves I do not know, but it usually appears to be a formality when a club is taken over.