Maybe it's time for Nigel to sell his shate before we end up going out of existence?..

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Who's buying?

I believe Nigel would gladly sell his share of the club if he could find a buyer

That's a Peter Hood quote. Just before he secured a secret £700k loan from ..........................

Why did he take us on in the first place when he clearly doesn't have the funds to run the Club successfully.
There is rumours that he was involved behind the scenes whilst working at the IRLF.. and Chalmers was just a front.
If he does want "rid" I wish he would start shopping us about and do so before he kills us, its bad when Keighley are showing more potential than us.
The guy on the radio last night from the cougars was enthusiastic and full of optimism, whilst loving us getting pumped.
Its not Dunning thats holding the club back, and I dont think it was Kear (apart from playing mundane RL) its the management and ownership.
With their bargain basement attitude and reliance on the dying fan bases good will.

Wood's malign influence has been a factor since Hood was in charge (see the Odsal "deal" back in 2012). Then if you look at who was given "RFL" approval to take over club ownership since then it's a real rogues gallery.

Why he wants the club is anyone's guess. He certainly doesn't show much enthusiasm for it and judging by noises coming out of the club they're absolutely skint.

I don't own a Rugby League club, because I can't afford to run one, and don't have the skill set to run one....
I wish Nige had learned that lesson after he took the Bluesox into admin, left them homeless and in the championship forever.

I don't see any way back. Nobody is championing the club, there is zero enthusiasm or communication. Dunning speaks well and sensibly but not a word from boardroom level other than it has to be sustainable.

Well here's news - it doesn't. Give the people absolutely nothing to get behind, feel proud of, feel part of as Bradfordians - to enjoy even and it will not sustain. The post-Caisley campaign to demonise Caisley and thereby excuse the Hood/McNamara debacle has reached a weird ironic apotheosis with Wood stood in Odsal on his own.

Keeping my powder dry until I see who we appoint as coach and how next year's squad shapes up.
Just watching an interview with John Kear now and he mentions that next season is 'a very important season for the game as a whole'.

Bulls need to make sure we finish in the top 6/top 8 next year if it's 2 teams of 10 or 2 teams of 12 from 2024 otherwise might as well call it a day.

I feel something more dramatic is coming for both the game and the Bulls. 51k for a 4 team cup final. Giants scored and it was so quiet I thought the ref had stopped play.

The game needs a boost alright.

As for the Bulls we're just like a modern day Huddersfield Barracudas. We need a Ken Davy or we'll continue to wither on the vine.

I don't think there is any way that Nigel could get us to where we need to be, I would actually love to be proved wrong and he kickstarts Bullmania again.
Given there is very little chance that is going to happen I think he should do the honourable thing and give Chris Caisley a bell..

Playing devils advocate here..

After all the years of owners who have stolen money, not paid people, sent us bust. The club is now at least seemingly getting the fundamentals right. Progression might be slow compared to other clubs, but isn’t this better than the boom or bust we’ve seen in recent years?

I have spoken to Nigel and Jason Hirst a few times in hospitality, as a fan it’s painful to see us nowhere near the likes of Featherstone. But I admire the fact they aren’t promising anything and are just trying to make the club sustainable. Something we all wanted. Are things perfect? Far from it. But maybe better things are coming and we shouldn’t really be looking for scapegoats? The guy pumped 600k in of his own money clearing chalmers debts. Why would he have let that amount of debt get run up if he was involved?

Chalmers wasn't supposed to be on his own.

Wood and the RFL hand picked the dynamic duo of Lowe and Chalmers who both knew they were getting the club before liquidation.

People who'd thrown their hats in the ring before and were preparing new bids were told not to bother doing so again and the club was subsequently liquidated.

My guess is the Lowe/Chalmers partnership was meant to get us to the time Nigel quit the IRFL and then 'sell' to him. It looks like Chalmers, left to his own devices, went rouge and got delusions of walking the team out at Wembley.

I still believe Nige had a plan, whether that would benefit him more than the Bulls remained to be seen but if rumours are true and Mrs Wood is divorcing him and taking 50% he's in a precarious position both clubwise and personally.

We may well be collateral damage if he's made a lot of 'loans' to the club and she wants that money back as part of her settlement.

You can only speculate that he had the money to buy the lease, move us out and sell the land and make a pretty penny... he talked about it enough but it looks like it's coming off the rails.

I honestly don't buy the idea of Wood taking us over to benefit himself. Of all the ways to benefit financially, owning an RL club isn't one of them. Even the the talk of Odsal, the RFL brought odsal over a decade ago. I honestly don't believe there was anything more to it than the RFL totally crapping themselves that a big RL club was on the verge of going bust, panicked and bailed us out, which just damaged everyone as a result.

I believe he probably does want the club to do well, but whether he has the finances and competency to back that up is another argument.

Best laid plans springs to mind.

Its the same old cyclical conversation. We all know there was something extremely odd about the way our new owners have been appointed. We know that people with money were overlooked in favour of people who had none. But not one of us can come up with a compelling reason why we've been meddled with in this way. Someone had a plan for Bradford and manipulated ownerships to achieve it. But what was the plan, and is it still a plan or did it fail?

My own belief is that jumping into bed with stock cars was the first sign it was failing.

I assume the big idea was, acquire the lease, CBMDC sell the land in totality, pay out the leaseholder whilst putting a smaller more affordable stadium on Dickie Dunns and we're SL ready - home wise if not team wise.

Then
- BoZo levels everything up
- Covid strikes further levelling up
- Putin has a brainfart REALLY levelling up
- Someone decides Dickie Dunns should be listed
- Mrs Wood decides enough is enough
- JK bores the remaining fans away with the one-up fest whilst simultaneously losing the dressing room

I actually feel sorry for him...he must be under immense pressure.

Should we ask Nestegg for an update?

This is the only plan that I could see at the time. And it’s gone now. The only plusses are we seem to be stable and keeping within a budget. And that’s it. The only remaining pipe dream is that somehow the City of Culture legacy will allow the council some leeway to trickle money into sport, including RL in Bradford. But that’s 2025…

Being stable and keeping to a budget needs to be sold somehow. Difficult. Because if it looks like doing just enough to scrape into the play offs every year for the foreseeable future then you'll not get many takers which in turn hits budgets and makes even that basic aim harder to meet.

Capital of Culture legacy is quite tenuous and probably too far down the track for us now.

We need to back the new coach (whoever he is) so that finishing in the play offs actually happens. Winning rugby is what is needed. A tilt a promotion is probably out of the question at the moment but it should be the aim eventually otherwise people will lose interest. Fans want to see positives and a sense that things are improving - which isn't the case right now.

I'm not sure which part of the 600k news is the more startling. That somehow a guy using the RFL's bank account found enough idiots to give him 600k in credit. Or that Nigel Wood, having previously had no involvement, arrived and [ipumped 600k in of his own money[/i to clear those debts. Something tells me Wood didn't actually say this himself.

Very well put.