Hull FC fan in peace, no agenda other than I live locally.

Apologies if covered elsewhere but heard some outlandish rumours today (from a random source) which can be summarised as;
RFL have agreed to sell Odsal for housing
Richard Dunn centre will be demolished and will house a new 12k seater for you guys
RFL also to relocate Red Hall to this site.

Sounds bonkers to me but the source, although nothing whatever to do with RL, generally has their finger on local property news. Sound crazy?

Sounds about right to me

Apart from RFL don't own Odsal so can't sell it

Who does then? If the council it might be a goer?

Sell Odsal for housing? Can they build housing on it with it being an old landfill site?

They can build houses on it.

Doesn't sound mad to me. RFL sell the lease to fund a stadium and Bradford council sell land to fund new sports centre.

Win win

The RFL just want money and so do Bradford Council they don't give 2 figs for the Bulls

Do the Bulls have any garentee from the RFL they won't just kick em out of Odsal?

The Bulls have to play there until 2019. Also the owners of the stadium will want a permanent tenant. And the council understands that 2 recognisable sports teams in Bradford are better than 1

That caveat was written by the council. If they stand to make some money out of a deal I'm sure they'll overlook it.

I would think it would be in the council's interest to use Odsal for landfill for a few years and then build on it.

Yeah rumour was the RFL sell the lease they own on Odsal and then build a new headquarters on Richard Dunns (also possoble rumours of building a centre of excellence with some of the £10million infrastructure fund they receive from the government as part of the WC)

The council then sell the land and with the money they build a new stadium on Richard Dunns site. Obviously it sounds too good to be true as they are no losers.

Anyway we're still waiting for a Lego model of the stadium, with Andrew Chalmers holding a spade on the Richard Dunns site and a fancy name of "odsal super dooper mega wembley of the northern powerhouse dome" before believing anything!

Not sure the landfill aspect would be a big issue either for housing or industrial use. To get best use of the land available they would have to fill in the bowl, presumably topped off with 'clean' earth or rocks just to level it off and then do some stabilisation - the waste which was causing the problems would then be far underground.

Absolutely spot on







They are all in it as a business venture - they dont care if us fans moan now and again - they know we'll keep buying season tickets no matter what.

I'll believe it when I'm sat in it.

It won't be housing, but it is being sold and a new modest sporting village on Richard Dunn's is gathering momentum.

It will only get done when people see £ signs in front of their eyes.
In this case I do think there is a chance of it happening. Building a stadium inside Odsal always needed a millionaire to throw money away but if Odsal can be used to generate money and a small stadium built next to it with the RFL headquarters and possible museum then yes, I think this is our best bet.

All we need now is someone at the RFL to see this, talk to the council and then persuade some experienced rugby league man or men to come in and buy the bulls giving them assurances of a bright future so that person can rebuild the club slowly over the next few years in preparation for a SL licence bid. Yep, that looks like the best way forward for us.

I wonder if that could happen.........Oh........wait a minute!

Now that sounds like a "plan" to me.

How much of this did AC refer to in his forum speech

Whilst I expect that somewhere between 99 and 100% of all this is a load of wishful/apocalypse thinking, one thing is true and does put a new emphasis on what the council's priorities might be. That is the need for building land for houses which the government expects the council to identify and the council's need to raise money to cover its losses in grants from the government.

As the council has tenants for the land, tenants with long leases it should be said, then so long as the rent is paid, they need the RFL's agreement to do anything, though, since we're apparently taking a 'rent holiday', I'm not sure how much say the club might get.

From my own point of view I don't really care where (within the City) we finish up, if we get a decent ground out of it. I'd better stop now as it's starting to sound as though I actually believe some of this stuff....

If they need any labourers or tarmacking I know a couple of gangs that could do it on the cheap; we could also get rid of any hazardous waste no problem - cash in hand an all that.
Or they could pay us in season tickets - that would get the numbers nearer 3000

There is value in that site. But it needs a lot of upfront development cash to unlock any profit.

Council don't have cash, but they have land. And they also have statutory targets they need to hit. They need to build 4000 homes across all of Bradford - The Leeds/Bradford strategic corridor is a prime site- basically Tyersal/Tong (Tong training ground borders that). They also have statutory authority over public health- exercise, obesity - improving access to sport/exercise is a key target there. At the moment, an OSV type development would align with a lot of key Council targets. Especially if someone else pays.

RFL have cash. And they still seem to want a stadium they control, which can take England Internationals, cup semi-finals, that sort of thing, preferably centrally located with easy access to M62. So they'll be after a 30k stadium. They (or the stadium management company) will want a sitting tenant. I would assume the arguments will be over the share percentages in the stadium management company.

Anyway. All idle musings, the Bradford council strategic development plan is available on the council page. Their initial plans for developing Odsal Sedbergh are also available. But you all know it makes sense....

Park ave winter...bulls summer..
Two tennants right there with koukash and other dude two billionaire owners..hhhhmmm

Good luck today, Bulls. May Bongser lose yet more points in the predictions league!

I've been banging on about this for a while. the reasn the RFL are up to something, and why they acquired the lease on Odsal in the first place, is cos they have millions to spend from Sport England, but have to spend a certain amount on infrastructure. Bulls aren't important to them after 2019 when the rugby playing covenant expires, but do have a sublease so can't be booted. Unless of course happens and piles up, like being given no money and penalised -12 points, and they go bust and forfeit the sublease.

I refuse to accept that the RFL had the brains or vision to be that machiavellian when they bought the lease.

They have never demonstrated that kind of capacity for such innovative strategic thinking or foresight in the most important area of their existence i.e running the flippin game!