Yep, 500 grand will be down the drain if administrators ARE called in and Hood would get the last laugh. What a disgrace of a man.

I think if you were one of the creditors who were paid from the pledge funds : players, small suppliers or the public at large via tax you would not consider it money down the drain.
As a pledger I think we kept the team on the pitch and gave the clubs squabling owners extra time to find a solution

I agree with this, I dont regret paying the £400 paid for the four of us, nor do I regret wondering round with a bucket asking for donations at the Leeds game. I hope and believe that the £500 000 raised at least enabled us to keep playing, and paying the staff until something more permenant was sorted out.

I did ask at the time if it would have been better to go into immediate administration , and for the 500K to be used to kick start a new co, but Adey convinced me that this was a bad idea. cant help but feel my instincts were right if this rumour comes true!

As Gene Krantz said as Apollo 13 exploded, "Lets look at this in terms of status. What do we have that is working?"

The truth is we dont know and wont know! If a newco is granted the Bradford Bulls place in Superleague then its ownership will be the Caisley group, wont it? The only assets we have are the players. If Hood is to be believed (can we realistically do this?) then we have no debt as such. If Caisley is to be believed, then things are not that good!

All I can see here is that administration would enable us to:

have a clear and simple view on who owns the club. Thus making it easier to attract inverstors going forward;

clear out players that are on contracts that dont match their talent;

risk losing players that we would like to keep for the future;

lose 4-6 competition points;

risk losing our SL licence in two years;

alienate the fans who gave generously to avoid such a situation.




Its hard for me to look beyond Hood and Bennett for blame for where we are now. They could have not called in the pledge. If the leaked letter is real (yet another what if!!!!) then prior to the pledge deadline they knew that a majority of shareholders were against them and that their position was untenable, regardless of the success or otherwise of the pledge. also, the way that they presented "facts" to the fans became less and less credible as we got further into this debacle.


But hey ho! who has lost the most? Yes its the Bradford fans and rugby league fans in general who have been duped into thinking that they could avoid what has always seemed inevitable. As well as feeling sorry for ourselves, what about those players who gave their medals/ rings/ shirts for the club's survival. The club will be irrepairably damaged by this whole episode. I hope that those responsible can live with themselves.

In which case I am happy to clarify that I beleive both camps have been so doing, in their respective different ways.


I have told you in a PM anyway. Maybe you could ring the source I named and ask him yourself? I just ask that you maintain the confidence on here.


I think you will find I have. Over the clear "black hole" where I cannot account for what happened to all the Odsal proceeds, for example. Over Hood's failure to stand down when it was clear the majority of the shareholders demanded it and he had delivered on the immediate requirement of avoiding immediate administration, for example. Over his desperately poor PR over the whole pledge period, for example. Whether equally critical is a separate issue. I would also point out that what you call "evidence" is all too often no such thing, being symptoms and not necessarily causes.


I have never said I was being even-handed. I have tried to be objective, but the one side I AM on is the side of natural justice. The one thing that really riles me, more than anything else, is injustice. Much of what I have posted has been in response to what I perceived to be injustice, frequently where people were making attacks without - in my opinion - sufficient hard facts to form a more objective conclusion. I stress "perceived" - my opinion. You in turn have yours, and others have theirs. If I am a propagandist for anything, it is the truth - however uncomfortable that may be, including to me. I detest liars, and people being deliberately disingenuous comes close. As I have repeatedly said, I hold and held no brief for Hood. As I have said before, my first impression of him was that he seemed naïve and lightweight, but probably genuine. That remains my view. As does my view, again formed from observation, that Caisley seemed to be an extremely assertive bully intolerant of the views of others. Neither in my view is what I would seek in a Chairman. Maybe some amalgam of the best aspects of each would be.



Even so, when more facts become available then if necessarily I HAVE moved my position. Indeed, probably my biggest [ivolte face [/iwas over Harrisgate, when it became clear to me - in my opinion, of course - that what we had been told and assured of at the time simply cannot have been correct. Told by Mr Caisley. The other big one was of course over the Odsal Lease sale. Told by Messrs Hood, Bennett, Duckett and Duffy. And again, when it became clear to me - in my opinion of course - that what we had been told at the time cannot have been correct. I wasn't the only one to laud Hood over the Odsal sale, same as I wasn't the only one to support the Harris signing. And I wasn't the only one to find that those who argued at the time it had to be bailout had more justice in their argument than appeared to me at the time. Even if there were further motives behind the sale. Why the hell do you think I was happy to put my name to the Bullbuilder statement calling for some clear answers - once the crisis was over?


But that was not the point. I do not know who the leaker is, and can only speculate - and there was a hint, I am sure accidental, yesterday. And until yesterday I thought it must be someone from Camp Caisley - or someone doing the job they were told to do.

I have never sought to be either disingenuous or resort to derision in support of my arguments. I just wish that applied more generally.

The real problem is no information coming out of the Bulls camp / whoever


This is now leading to rampant speculation, Chinese whisper’s and secret information passed by encoded crisp packed wrappers left in a bin somewhere in Bradford. Lets just settle down and hope for the best and keep our pace makers ticking over nicely.



xxx

The club has been badly run for too long. Poor decisions across all areas.

My heart hoped that Admin could be avoided, my head though told me otherwise.

If the report is true all we can hope for is a pre-pack arrangment where players are retained and we can commence proper planning to get the club back to the top.

Three observations on that:

1 - If we DO end up in Admin now, it is likely we will never know if Caisley's public intervention did indeed frighten off prospective funders, and it is likely we will never know whether the outcome reflects more a desire to remove the other shareholders as opposed to financial necessity. At trhe moment, I am more minded than not to suspect that CC would wish to avoid administration, but that is only speculation. The day I "convinced you" was the Wednesday before Easter, IIRC? The day before Caisley's publuic intervention. I said, at the time, that that intervention must surely jeopardise the prosepcts for the then-current board's plan succeeding.

2 - You presuppose that the RFL would allow the club just to dump those players we did not wish to keep, and retain those we wanted. I suspect the RFL would allow no such cherry-picking - imagine the uproar from other clubs if that was allowed (although I grant you that with the RFL anything is possible).

3 - Agree totally that a clear, uncontested ownership structure would surely be a massive step forward in attracting inward investment. The present situation is quite intolerable, and - having clearly lost the battle - I would urge the losers to put the interests of the club first and the victors to make them a realistic (and modest) offer to acquire the shares - and put a stop to this nonsense once and for all.

The extent to which the fans would be alienated would depend very much on who they sought to blame, I guess. And, in any case, to the victors the spoils - and the opportunity to shape the writing of history. The old Board has done little so far to justify its actions. Should the club be put into administration, it will be interesting to see if that situation changes. But by then it would be totally academic anyway.

It will never become clear, though. Not now. I have no gripe with the new board, because it hasn't yet done anything. Which tbf, to date, includes the positive "not doing" of not putting us into administration. I suppose once they do their first ever thing, I'll know whether I have a gripe with them.

Rather than participate in the pathetic ing contest which the usual suspects launch into with the predictability of the transit of Venus, I turn yet again to the biggest mess operationally, and that is how this board, or any board, can run this shambolic place if the private company share structure remains as it is, and how any potential investor whose head is screwed on would go anywhere near a project where they know that the main protagonists are implacably hostile, won't even meet for years, and show no signs of any reconciliation.

So I am sort of assuming that unless there is a way to somehow alter the tangled web that is the present system of shareholdings, whoever is running the club will have one hand and a few fingers tied behind their back, together with the glint of several blades.

What I don't know (I assume Adey would have some idea but fail to see why he continues to share his opinions when whatever he posts, he is constantly personally vilified) is whether, now that the new board is in place, they could arrange a pre-pack the effect of which would be to effectively change this ridiculous shareholder-camps impasse. A pre-pack "from within", as it were, with a predetermined outcome and a known sensible management and operational structure going forward, instead of the current utter mess, may well be attractive to any potential "investor" they may have in the wings, and done that way, so far as I know they could preserve our playing assets as well as not shafting any small creditors. As long as the creditors vote for it. I'm no expert, but these sort of arrangements seem to very much depend on who has the casting vote/votes. I wonder who that would be?

Well... according to companies house we aren't in Admin yet !

I would think that any investor looking at the way this Club operates with the present shareholding would insist on all those shareholders giving up their shares for a nominal amount or wait until administration becomes a reality then pick up the pieces. Persuading said shareholders to sell their shares would help in resolving the present contentuous way the Club is being run and would solve a lot more immediate issues which administration would only exacerbate!
Can't see it happening but it would be a better way forward all round!

Administration is a response to insolvency. As an alternative to liquidation (receivership having been largely killed off by the 2002 Enterprise Act. It was never intended to be a means of contriving an insolvency so that an ownership impasse can be resolved. If the club is indeed insolvent, and there is realistic chance of saving the business in some form, then administration is the clear way to go. Sorting out the shareholder bollox once and for all to help stop the same mess happening all over again would be a huge bonus, and I suspect could influence the High Court's decision if the situation was at all marginal. What I am less clear on is whether a minority of shareholders could challenge the granting of an Administration Order, in the same way as the majority made clear they would in the leaked letter (your thoughts?).

If there was a prepack in place, it would all be over before the creditors had a chnace to consider anything - that is the big argument against prepacks.

If - and its a big if - the review concludes that administration is the only realistic option to preserve the business in the longer term (I feel sure that they could mog on through this season with some player sales) and IF there is a prepack and IF the terms of that prepack are that Newco will satisfy ALL the recorded non-shareholder creditors and IF the RFL thereby agrees to waive any points deduction because the only loss has been to shareholders (and tough, that's life) and do not otherwise impose penalty because Newco has treated the players and other staff fairly - IF all of the above, then I'm for it. Have said so from the start. But if all those terms are not met, I become increasingly worried for each term that is not.

Forget that. Takes several days for new notices to appear, once they are filed - and there are usually time allowances for that. need to keep an eye on the London Gazette.

I think you will find that the pledge money will have paid any debts that were covered by directors personal guarantees, I think most people would and do make the same decisions when as company directors they are looking at possible administration.

And that is an important point.

SHOULD the company enter formal insolvency, the insolvency practitioner appointed is required to enquire of creditors and other parties regarding the conduct of the directors in the period leading up to the insolvency. Can you see the potential significance of the leaked letter now? A question that the administrator would surely need to consider is whether the directors paid off certain creditors (i.e the bank) in preference to other creditors, for reasons other than necessary business ones. If they DID, that could well be judged to be a "fraudulent preference" and liable to be set aside. In which case, the former guaranteeing directors could find themselves being pursued by the bank for a liability they thought had been settled.

If the directors called in the pledges without having reasonable grounds to believe that insolvency would thereby be avoided, this is in my opinion a very real threat to the former directors. One assumes they - and of course lawyer Caisley - were well aware of it - and I specifically mentioned the risk of fraudulent preference to them and they seemed to be - which was perhaps the biggest reason why I felt able to trust that they did indeed have a realistic plan in place.

As always, time will tell!

10am friday deadline past, no announcement. the Bulls have updated the website this morning with a new story about the academy, and the T&a have run a usual piece. Can we assume this first deadline is wrong then?

Given the degree of lock down at the club regarding whats going on, and where the review is happening (ie not Odsal) I struggle to belive this rumour from the op tbh. It might be that admin happens, it might not, but I don't think it will be leaked in this manner either way. The first we'll know about it will come from a press release from the BODs.

Cheers to the mods for the thread title change and well done to the op for getting so many arguments going.

The reality is that the bank and other creditors with pgs covering their loans / debts will not cause a fuss because thet have been paid, the reamaining creditors will be made up of small companies and maybe larger companies who are owed ` small ` ammounts. Added together I would guess at say 1 million pounds in total for a business the size of the Bulls. If administration is entered then as is 99.9% always the case these small creditors lick their wounds and move on because if they want to call a creditors meeting and pursue the directors then guess what the costs of doing this are down to them. Whilst on the subject can you see a new investor coming in and picking up the liability for the debts, they would surely want a clean slate.

Noticed the OP was lurking on the forum just after 10 to see how much trouble he'd managed to stir up

I was just able to log on during my break, that's all.

Don't you mean morning tea?

Sale of lease was a stroke of genius. Taking an asset not represented on the balance sheet into cash; good piece of strategic thinking. Not forgetting that the deal was struck with RFL with a guarantee to retain £350,000 of a long term loan, which was reneged on at point of signing. Also at same time bank reneged on a written deal to reduce overdraft facility at 10% a month. That equated to a loss of £635,000 in cash more or less overnight. Tell me any club without a sugar daddy that could stand that loss of cash? The pledge monies plus other options on the table (and not just Mr Fraudster) had the potential to help the club's mid term future IMO

That would mean Sod Hall have found the Bulls to be an embarrasment for whatever reasons and then engineered a scenario that would force the Bulls into administration hmmm

Just so it's clear, what do you mean by the RFL reneging on the deal at the point of signing?

I ask because I'm not sure how you renege on a deal prior to signing the contract which affirms the agreement.

Do you mean the RFL and the Bulls struck a verbal deal and when the contract arrived it didn't contain what the Bulls understood it was going to? If so, why did they sign it?

Isn't it also the case that the club now has to pay rent when it didn't before?

Have we gone it to administration yet?

I think the ground deal is starting to look at lot like a "commercial" pay day loan, a bit of short term cash a lot of long term pain?