Let's not forget how they ended up with the lease. That, in my opinion, is completely the fault of our incompetent owners at the time. I wouldn't really call it asset stripping when it was offered to them as part repayment of a loan we couldn't repay

They should have let nature take it course at that point, they saw an opportunity and took it is my view.

If the brown sticky stuff was fully allowed to interface with the air circulation device at that point we'd have stood a better chance. My opinion obviously but one round of utter pain would have been better than death by more than a thousand cuts.

The RFL should require every member club to have the same accounting year end date (30 Nov or 31 Dec?) and should require FULL audited accounts (not the abbreviated accounts most submit to Companies House) to be submitted to the RFL within say 4 months of the year end (shorter than the statutory timescale). All part of the requirements of membership of the RFL. Over time, would force clubs to get their financial controls and reporting into good shape.

That would require the RFL to have the expertise to interpret them and to impartially act upon the result.

Why don't you tell us what you really think?

Easy enough to solve. Take £5K from each SL club's central funding and employ someone at the RFL who could audit accounts.

How is it asset stripping? What are the RFL making out of holding the head lease? They would be better off saying to Bradford, here have it back, you pay the bills.

The Bulls DO pay the bills that's the problem.

We may not have been paying the actual bills but in the end we do pay the price.

I am starting to think it would nice to see every player say no to the new contracts and not be able to get a team for HKR or a few games after that. We will never find out what has gone on and who was making the decisions as it could be embarrassing for the RFL.

The backlash that concerns me more than that is supporters turning their backs on the new club and there are less than 2000 at home games where half of them had their tickets given. We would struggle to see the season out if that happened.
I hope I am looking on the downside.
Fingers crossed that these two big RL names are in it purely to get back into the game and re-build a "big" club that is now on its knees. We now desperately need details to stop all of our guessing and speculating.

What do the RFL get out of that?

£70k/year, major say in the use of the land, incumbent club paying for the upkeep/bills in an antiquated stadium etc, a cynic would also put forward it gives them full and complete control over ownership any Bradford club (as witnessed during this debacle and Marc Green), land to build their rumoured pie in the sky national academy and head quarters now they've disposed of red hall...

But say it quietly as it was a complete act of favouritism.

£72k a year rent but the club also pay for the upkeep of the stadium which can run into 10s of thousands per year.

:1kk5jo8e
Don't think that's totally true, tbh.

Yes, they were pretty inept, that's clear, but I think Peter Hood really thought he was [i:1kk5jo8ejust selling the lease[/i sideways when they deducted the outstanding amount.

Knocked his financial planning even more when bank took rest of money for lease to clear clubs overdraft that was secured against the lease.

RFL pay a rent to Bradford Council as landlords. What do you expect? You have no idea what influence they have on the use of the land, which is restricted by legal agreements & planning permissions. They have influence over the ownership of all clubs. Bradford have shown they cannot be trusted to run a steady ship; only a fool would suggest they not be involved in the next arrangement. But you think the RFL should just give it Bradford Bulls, despite you also accusing them of favouritism.
I would think you have no knowledge of any discussions about an academy or HQ. They will both come at significant cost, including significant ongoing rent to a skint local authority.



Make your mind up. It was either favouritism or opportunism, which? That green-eyed monster is slowly devouring your crumb of a brain.

Think the rent to the Council is significantly lower than £72k tigertot. It was when the club had the lease.

They do, if you count one peppercorn as rent, and if they ever send the peppercorns across, which I doubt.

The Bulls get the bills, paying them is a different matter.

Well yes there is that

Think its more the tax that confuses any Bulls beancounter.

One of the major problems was frittering away the near £5m handout from the council for the stadium upkeep on the coral stand a a very good set of players instead of actually keeping it for it's intended purpose

The Coral Stand is one of the best sources of income we had so WTF you on about?

Surely by now the Coral stand would have repaid the original investment ?

Actually the club needed the Coral Stand as it had no corporate facilities at Odsal at all in 2000. What they should have done was to get a loan to pay for it rather than use the handout to pay for it outright. Simply not having corporate facilities would have left them unable to entertain sponsors etc. The money would have frittered away even faster otherwise. The Coral Stand is probably the only profitable part of the business!

A lot of the handout did go on the stadium upkeep too. I remember Duffy telling me of £70k that was needed to sort out drains in one part of the stadium that had collapsed. Possibly spending some of it on Lesley Vainikolo and Co wasn’t arguably the best thing to do in hindsight but I would suggest that as soon as the Council came out of that agreement the writing was on the wall anyway.

That’s the issue. No club can survive at Odsal without a wealthy benefactor covering the costs of upkeep. The Council were that benefactor in some ways for a time but that money they handed out wasn’t going to cover things indefinitely.

Probably so by now yes.