What I don't understand is that why should the SL Licence be up for debate, if the Bulls remain the same Co ? Or does simply going into Admin, negate the SL Franchise agreement ?? I can understand if we are at the end of a licencing period, but not in the middle of one. Cheers

suppose it depends whether they want to honour any of the debts.......dont suppose they have paid rent since they sold the lease. Can't see the HMRC letting them carry on as the same company under a CVA..... so in effect they would be a totally new enterprise....hence the RFL not committing on the SL licence

Obviously it's going to be a protracted period of negotiations between now and the end of the season then.



I'm sure I read somewhere that the ABC Consortium had copied in the other SL clubs to their offer. That can't be right surely? To mangle your analogy that'd be like writing down your chess moves and copying them to the other players.



If it's a game of poker between the RFL and potential buyers it's a shame the administrator decided to make the coaching/backroom staff redundant immediately. That to me seemed like a mistake given the lengthy period of negotiation with a team of players but no staff. I'm not sure what message he was intending to send with that one.



I think once Potter and staff depart that will do more to foster a feeling of "being doomed". However while he and the team continue to perform against all the odds there'll be more energy than ever behind them. If anything the energy on the terraces has been all the greater since this all began. Hopefully this mess won't result in that spirit being lost, because if that happens all those mixed up in this can hang their heads in shame.

I would suspect that any takeover from ABC or anyone else would be ready to do a deal with HMRC.

Whether HMRC are open to deals is another matter.

Didnt Gary Tasker say something along the lines of "we are not in a position to make any payment to creditors"?

No payments can be made to any creditors. Basic law of insolvency.

Creditors have to be paid in a specified order, out of available assets:

Preferential (nowdays means certain employee amounts)

Secured by first floating charge (in this case, anything still owed to Natwest)

Secured by second floating charge (in this case, the council. The RFL released its charge when their loan was repaid)

Unsecured creditors (since 2002, including HMRC).


The only way of resiolving this is a CVA, whereby a proposal has to be agreed by 75% of the creditors by value. HMRC are very unlikely to consider a CVA unless the amount being paid in the pound is substantial - they are sick and tired (and rightly so) of being ripped off with some stupid 10p in the pound proposal by sports clubs, and current thinking is that they would rather see a club go into liquidation[i pour encourager les autres[/i. After all, most monies owed to HMRC were never a club's money in the first place, having been collected or deducted effectively on trust for the taxpayer.

Failing that, the administrator either sells the assets, and repays creditors as far as he can out of the proceeds (in the Bulls' case, I doubt there would be a penny for the unsecureds), or he gives up and the company is liquidated - in whch case the liquidator does the same, but since he is not selling a going concern you normally get even less.

How does the Administrator get paid ? Is he preferential or would he have to wait like the other creditors ?
Or is he already on the payroll ?

So on what basis did the RFL lend the club 700k? On Peter Hood's word and nothing else? As a comparison I'm pretty sure the RFL sent its people into the Crusaders when they experienced difficulties. This became public knowledge. In the Bulls case they appeared simply hand over 700k and keep it secret. I'm not an accountant and I think it's really good that you're not one either. Even allowing for this, how many repayments would need to be missed before you thought, 'er there's a problem here'?

In this context they then negotiated, without any reference to the shareholding of the Bulls or the member clubs to purchase the lease on Odsal Stadium to 'preserve an iconic stadium' when they knew this wasn't true. You don't think this sequence is unusual but I do.

By potential consortia I'm assuming what Guilfoyle meant was that they withdrew when they saw the potential liabilities going forward against the likely income. Three consortia withdrew, the ABC consortia and now Khan/Sutcliffe have made offers. This makes 5 consortia. I don't know who they are but they expressed an interest.

The RFL could have intervened if by no other means saying, 'no Peter, you can't have 700k'. Cibaman makes the case a few posts back. We would have got to where we were last March much sooner and still holding the lease. The club would have entered administration having not lost both the RFL's and the supporters cash. The lease would not now be a 'condition' and the RFL sat with a £1.5 million piece of paper. These factors mean the situation is now much, much worse than the day Peter said 'give me 700k please'.

Had they made the loan conditional on the RFL's accountants entering the club we may even have an independent view on the state of the club. Something you believe we don't have (probably correctly).

I certainly don't disagree with your views on the main shareholders but the conduct of the RFL is inexplicable and this is the point of the 'navel gazing'. The RFL share some of the responsibility for the situation as is. They've acted as governing body of a licensing process which is meant to have an audit and also as a bank of last resort to a club asking for money and appear to have never taken the most cursory interest in the clubs finances. It doesn't take wishful thinking or hindsight to say this situation is very, very odd.

ABC consortium submit third bid.
Hope theres no conditions attached this time.

Does anyone know who is heading the ABC bid now that the original leader has withdrawn?
Has this third bid been circulated to other SuperLeague clubs like the last one?
Does anyone know if the Sutcliffe consortium has submitted a written bid to the administrator and if so has it been passed to Red Hall?
Can a trade journalist actually do their job and give us a clue what's going on rather than just repeating the statements made by the administrator and Red Hall? You are allowed to ask questions and approach people you know-

Just been on Look North,Sutcliffe written bid officially handed in.

Can i put forward a question to the folks from other clubs suggesting we simply sell players to fund the August wage bill?

Pure speculation but lets say Hull FC offer £10k for Whitehead, Wire offer £15k for Bateman, Wigan offer £10k for Kearney and Leeds £5k for l'Estrange. On the basis Wakey appeared to get £5k per player when they were in a similar sitution to us but much earlier in the season compared to where we are now, these figures dont appear unreasonable. Also include the fact the most squads of teams above wont have much money under cap left (probably!), s/l deadline for signings seems to have passed and in a few weeks they can probably get most of above for nowt they dont need to be raiding benefactors piggy banks to make massive bids

If this did happen our reported £160k monthly wage bill would drop by say £20k (?) as I think Whitehead & Bateman are still on their original contracts so not massive salaries this would give us £40k liquid cash to cover wage bill now in region of £140k. Any suggestions from all the fans saying just sell players to cover wage bill, please address directly to Mr Administrator, c/o Odsal Stadium, Bradford as I am sure he would benefit from your expertise

Dunno, neither do you, speculation pointless.


Of course it's unusual - unique even - though the bit about "without reference" is plain wrong - neither the Bulls, nor the RFL, are run by committee, consulting member clubs or consulting shareholders would simply not be the way it works.


Well yes, but just be sure you aren't blaming the previous management for that, liabilities and income going forward is in the hands of the incoming management, if they couldn't think of a viable plan then fair enough but starting pretty much from scratch, that's down to them.

I tend to think slightly different, I've no doubt that the basic premise (they couldn't figure a way to make the numbers work) is right; but IMHO the numbers could be made to work for a new owner who wasn't looking to make a pile of money, but no investor who wanted to make a reasonable return on investment would invest.


In your opinion, but with respect you don't know. You don't have the details of what went on with the RFL or how it worked (no-one does).

And the point you miss is that I'll grant the situation is much worse now than then, but teh situation is NOT much worse than the day before we went into administration. It was better, because we had done a deal with the RFL that had helped keep us going. Hood didn't put us into administration. You think we would have gone tits anyway, but I'd have rather taken our chances with the old Board and whatever potential 'investors' they were talking to, than what actually happened.

Would that have been any better? We can't ever know. But it couldn't have been worse.


I have no idea what the RFL did. For all we know maybe they did this. But any view on the club from accountants is whatever the person briefing and paying them told them they want it to be.


Maybe they do, maybe they don't, unless the full details ever emerge we won't ever know (like much of the stuff that has gone on). It would be fascinating to have chapter and verse but in terms of point, I don't think there is one.

This.

Also some of said people need a refresher on role and responsibilities of an administrator, as many appear to be confused to near-Olympic standard.

Great post except you probably overstated the amounts we'd get at this point

And, in answer to some other criticisms, whilst I don't know what Maislebugs did or said when he wrote to Peter Hood, I PERSONALLY posted on this site a request for fans to come together and make a protest two years ago when it became obvious that the management were allowing the club to drift into lower crowds, less sponsorship thus (as I sadly predicted) creating a downward spiral of events into oblivion. I suggested a sit-down protest - Warrington style - and all I got was a tirade of responses telling me that I didn't understand that really it was Caisley and Noble to blame, not Hood and McNamara. Mmmm. Shows how much I knew (despite a lifetime in management!). The real tragedy is that none of it helps us now and we are where we are - but some day we need some answers.

It's an excellent effort mate - though if anyone wants to have a sweep on the time of the next post from a fan of another club telling us to sell players, I'll go for, ooohh..just turned nine o'clock.

Has it been confirmed anywhere that they only wanted to know if it was just for this licence period?

So it is stated further up that ABC have put in a THIRD bid. Do you really want someone in charge who has tried it on twice already. Do they really love the club as much as that. They certainly seem desperate to get into Odsall

It's called negotiation.

Perhaps they are 'desperate' to save the club and build it up again

The truth is we don't know anything about the motivations of ABC - heck, we don't even know who they are

It's called land-grab. Can anyone be that desperate to own a rugby league club? Doubtful. Can anyone be that desperate to get hold of a piece of land? Yep.

how about they buy the lease for £1.25m, pay off all debts and deposit £1m with the RFL to fund the club for the next 2 years that would mean they are still Bradford Bulls and serious about Rugby League.....but they probably want to start up as a newco with no debts, pay nowt for the lease and retain all the star players and be guarantedd SL status for the next 5 years with Sky money for next year up front....

Thats the 2 extremes of what the bids could be.....LOL!!!!!!

You're right the truth probably lies between the 2. But if it's the former can we have our 6 points back please

And the RFL couldn't possibly accept as it is a conditional offer!