Aaron Bower reporting a number of Super League clubs have bid above the RFLs current £750,000 valuation of the lease the RFL own to buy Odsal from the governing body
.The clubs are apparently concerned the RFL could sell Odsal off externally on the cheap.

How long is our agreement for. I would imagine they'd milk us to death... but hadn't Chalmers already offered more than £750k?

any idea who it was

It was Carter and Hudgell in August. League Express doesn't say who it was this time but states that it was more than two club owners.

Can't see how rival clubs can own another club's lease on their ground - that would be a massive conflict of interest.

Whoever it is the rfl should accidentally leak who it is whilst asking for proof of funds.

I don't think they are genuine attempts to buy the lease, more like creating a market for it so that the RFL can't be seen to sell it off below market value at some point in the future.

I agree.

That almost suggests a modicum of forward planning by the RL authorities. Maybe the RFL should have been headhunted to supervise the whole Brexit farrago?

I can certainly understand why superleague clubs would be up in arms if, for example, the Bulls were able to buy the lease on the cheap.

After all, it's not as if the superleague clubs have benefited financially from our fall from grace in any way. Oh hang on...Perhaps the RFL sanctioned cash grab that superleague clubs undertook on the dying carcass of the Bulls wasn't quite the full pound of flesh they were looking for.

I agree. That’s why rfl should call their bluff whilst “accidentally” leaking their identities.

Definite attempt to bump up the price the RFL will put to Chalmers. He's already said he's asked about buying the lease so pure mischief making.

I don't even necessarily think they're worried about it being sold back to us in particular.
I'm more inclined to think this is more of the ongoing tension between sle and the rfl and we just happen to be a pawn in the middle of it.

Chalmers does not have the cash to buy the lease back, and the club certainly doesn't either.

But the person who covered the near 600k loss in the most recent accounts does have the funds to buy the Lease back.

The lease itself can only really be worth what it draws in rent and as we were, famously, paying 'peppercorn' before we sold it to the RFL I'm not sure what value would be put on it. The freehold however would be a different story. I'm no property expert but I'd suspect the two leases involved would be the biggest drawback to selling the freehold to an outside bidder.

Without seeing the full accounts it's difficult to comment, but an accounting loss and a cashflow are vastly different things.

In the current political and economic climate can’t see the council giving up the freehold unless they got a lot of money for it.

As for the lease I don’t expect us to be playing anywhere else other than a crumbling Odsal for the foreseeable future. There are no other options on the table.

SL club owners that are sticking their oars in would do better to concentrate on their own clubs.

Oh I dunno. It would be a jolly jape for them to spend so long with their eye off the ball playing games with our lease that they forget to pay a tax bill and go pop.

Or they may completely forget to submit their annual impotent threat to move out of their ground to the local paper.

There she blows













Brilliant

To be fair to them, once licensing got scrapped, they had to replace their equally impotent promise that the ground was getting improved shortly and would definitely be up to standard by the time the license kicked in. Although that one was only every 3 years instead of the annual tradition that you mentioned.

your forgetting he's an accountant and will have that in order unlike our previous owners but thanks for the reminders

And a merry Christmas to you for such a sweet response to mischievous trolling.

Has anyone heard of a new sports centre / track etc on the grounds of the old yorkshire martyrs school nr Tong

A couple of weeks ago it said on the pulse planning had been granted but I have seen nothing about this at all , just wondered if the plans included a stadium - I can dream lol

Though, never ever forget that one of our former chairmen was a solicitor. A solicitor a who specialised in company law, which would presumably have included a teensy bit about contracts, or so one would have thought. None of this stopped him from signing a player who was already legally contracted to another club (I'll not name him but it was Iestyn Harris) and which went on to cost the Bulls an eyewatering amount.

There is a much in the idea that very intelligent men lose all sense, common AND business, when 'sport' comes into the equation.

The peppercorn head lease is owned by the RFL and that runs to the year 2152.

The underlease the old Bulls had was only for 30 years. That ran from 2011 so has another 23 years to go. I assume (but have no knowledge) that this underlease was simply passed over to the present Bulls. (They could of course have instead entered into a brand new document).

However as an asset it is certainly of value as IIRC the rent is 72k p.a. Which I would choose over a peppercorn, any day. I'd guess that a value for the remainder of the lease would have something to do with the loss of rental income for the remainder of term which at this point would amount to roughly £1.65m if you ignore rent reviews.

The underlease contained clauses giving the head lessee the right to boot, subject to providing us with a 16000 capacity stadium to play in within 4 miles, if they needed the ground for redevelopment. That is now a real option as the "rugby covenant" expires in the spring. So selling the freehold to an outside bidder may well be very much a live option, but us moving to a suitable stadium would need to be part of any deal.