"They need their heart in sport and RL..."

No, they need their heart in running and sustaining a viable business.

No, I'd say they need their head in running and sustaining a viable business

Id say both. Wakefield now have a chairman who has the right balance of business nous and passion for RL. No reason why Bradford can't get someone similar.

Indeed

There is a world of difference in helping a club with short term issues or, to allow a member club to complete a fixture program but, to effectively write a blank cheque to cover any losses made by a privately run company would be bonkers.

Mind you, the precedent set, when they took over the lease at Odsal, which was costing the Bulls very little (in relative terms), was a dangerous move and one which, they probably regret.

Where are the Administrators up to with the interested parties and is there any deadline for a decision ?

I assume taking on the lease of Odsal was a move to protect the club long term.

i.e to stop an administrator from selling that lease in any future administrations.
If that lease was in the ownership of the club it would now be up for grabs with any interested parties, so unless there was some form of covenant to state that the lease can only be sold to allow RL to be played anyone could offer the creditors cash for that asset.

Leases are tricky and there may very well be restrictions on a lease and what purpose a piece of land can be used for, so it's hard to say without that knowledge whether the RFL move to buy it was the right or wrong one.

I suppose an alternative approach would be for a supporters trust to buy the lease and rent it back to the company that runs the bulls.
But it would mean that trust would have to cover the costs long term if no one came in to buy the Bulls or if the Bulls decided to move grounds part way through the lease.

I read on the Bradford forum one of the rumours was Koucash getting involved with Big Nige sacking his job off at Red Hall to run the show.

I wish this one had legs, I'd even go as far as advocating giving Bradford the lease back for free, as a sweetener for taking the buffoon.

If they take Nige away from the RFL I will chip in for the fee.

I think we could use Nige up at Odsal. To fill in the hole.

Great idea.

with chip being the operative word

I can't really believe this hasn't been discussed on here for ages, yet a predictions thread is up above thirty five pages!

The "Roller Coaster" that is Bradford appears to be heading on one of two tracks, one appears to offer some hope, with a slight chance of a serious cash injection. Yet the other track leads to potential oblivion, & it doesn't even warrant a mention on here.

Is everyone so blase about it all that it doesn't even get on the radar, hell, there's three pages on Coventry Bears.

Maybe everyone thinks there'll be a last minute survival package, or maybe no one gives a monkeys.

As it seems to be an annual thing now maybe folk have got used to it and can't be bothered going over it again, lessons don't seem to have been learnt and i guess the real truth is most folk couldn't care less anymore.

Yep but you saying most people don't care anymore is a bit like Farage slagging off the E.U.

The loss of Bradford would be a huge loss to R.L.

It's not just about Bradford though. They are merely a symptom of a much deeper malaise.

The game is disappearing up it's own @a as it contemplates another decade of austerity and a salary cap remaining frozen at 1999 levels. This managed decline of the sport which, these days, resembles a load of clubs having to pay regular visits to their Sky foodbank, is utterly screwed unless something drastic happens over the next few years to turn things around.

Best case scenario? Back to part-time for most of the clubs and players with just a small handful of clubs whose players are able to remain on full time contracts.

I'd get rid of the salary cap and allow any multi-millionaire sugar daddy to get onboard and spend as much money of their own on the sport and the club they may fancy taking over as they damn well like. At least that'd generate some headlines in the media along with the possibility of some big signings.

The current managed decline or policy of death by a thousand cuts is a tragedy still unfolding.

I doubt Bradford will be liquidated tomorrow. I also doubt they won't be in a similar situation in two years time, such is the cycle.

There in is the problem. How many multi-millionaire sugar daddies are there out there who've any interest in the sport? Part of the RFL's remit should be to promote the game far and wide, yet they seem incapable of doing that. Out of all the "expansion" clubs there's only been one that's actually worked and that was Catalan. Every other time the game has attempted to spread beyond the M62 it's fallen on its backside. But I think that's mainly down to the how as the RFL still cling to this idea that if you put a SL club in an area (even one without an RL history) that it'll be a huge success and are always shocked when it isn't.

The sport needs an overhaul. Full on root and branch style, otherwise I can't see it remaining a pro-sport beyond the next 10 years

Multi millionaire sugar daddies have no interest in our sport because the salary cap is static, restrictive and holds clubs back. Now, as mad as Koukash is, he was at least willing to really throw his cash at the Salford venture but has found himself handcuffed and tripped up at every turn. I'm surprised he is still in the game TBH. RL will never attract big time business men again in it's current form. It is small time. What William says, although cold and hard it is the pretty much the truth and something needs to be done and quickly.

That would pretty much have been my response.

If I was a multi-millionaire sugar daddy who fancied boosting my ego with an expensive hobby involving ownership and investment in a sporting club, I wouldn't touch Super League.

Where is the attraction and fun in being restricted in terms of how much you can spend on your hobby? I'm amazed Koukash is still involved at Salford. I'd have walked by now and told the RFL and the sport to go do one. No other sport would be stupid enough to turn down my millions.

Of course, it ought to go without saying that the cabal of former double glazing salesmen, carpet warehouse sellers, car room dealers, market traders and brickies who occupy the leading CEO and ownership positions at SL clubs don't want to spend any of their money, and they certainly don't want any rich outsider urinating into their p!ssy little paddling pool and showing them up for being the small time rug merchants they are.

Have to agree with the above couple of comments, every time Koukash has publicly spoken out against the antiquated not fit for purpose RFL he is ridiculed from all sides.

After 30 years of no money we come into some, Koukash spends a lot of it Salford get deducted points now he says nothing and spends nothing. FFS we have a wealthy owner and most predict us to still finish in the cellar. Only at Salford...

In fairness there was nothing stopping him spending as much money as he wanted to on things like your academy. He wasn't interested in that though and just wanted to bring as many overpaid mercenaries as possible. He could have built Salford up in a similar fashion to Ken Davey or Simon Moran, but his ego got in the way. The RFL might not be fit for purpose but neither is Koukash as an RL owner.

Well that's because he went about like a bull in a china shop, no reason why he couldn't have been smarter and calmer about they way he went about things.

Koukash is a publicist, and knows precisely how to get people to listen to him. He's a remarkable character and that is something that the sport has sorely lacked.

I'd much rather listen to somebody like Koukash, who is at the very least speaking positively about the sport and putting forward ideas to improve it, than a moaning windbag like Neil Hudgell.

The Premier league and European football have spending restrictions as huge teams have discovered.

Whilst I'd agree with some of the comments regarding "millionaire sugar daddies" - surely there has to be much more to this than just waiting for a knight with a shining chequebook?

I look at the sport and simply cannot see where the growth is.

We have a salary cap that was set in 1999. If it had merely grown with inflation, that salary cap would be close to £3m today, rather than £1.85m. And yet we find ourself in the position where we have clubs that still oppose any sort of increase on the grounds of affordability. I think all of the sport's stakeholders really need to look at why they haven't been able to grow their clubs merely in line with inflation whilst our main competitors have achieved far more.

Where is the growth in crowd numbers? Where is the growth in ticket revenue? Where is the growth in commercial revenue? Where is the growth in non-matchday revenue? Where is the improvement in young player development? As it stands we've got a marginally better TV deal, but little else, whilst the sport's competitors have continued to grow.

The RFL is a convenient lightning rod for many of the games ills but the clubs really have to step up to the standards required. With a sustainable and effective marketing strategy in place, it shouldn't take a glut of cheap tickets to get anything approaching a respectable crowd at Super League fixtures, it really shouldn't be the case that clubs are selling raffle tickets for their main commercial sponsorship oppportunity and it really shouldn't come to the point where clubs can't grow their non-matchday revenue.

If the growth really is there and I've got the above all wrong, then I'd love to know where this additional funding is going, because (in most cases) it sure as hell isn't going into talent retention, youth development or facilities.