Furthermore, what happens when the next 'specific bill' comes in, that isn't covered by your alleged break-even position from matchday revenues?

It looks like a very precarious way to do business.

BillyRhino + hide posts =

Sadly he betrays the ignorance and arrogance of too many Leeds fans.

We've already had our turn very few of the so called "rugby league family" give a flying one. This despite several years of cutting our cloth to suite. Maybe you can call it bitterness, but it's bitterness born out of a sense of injustice.

Clearly I was a fool to donate money to your "sponsor a player" cause at the time, or offer help to those setting up your supporters trust.

I'm not having a dig at you personally. It's the difference in the general attitude of the so called "rugby league family" to both situations that gets me!

Not even close mate. Sounds like far too much paperwork.

And your evidence for this is?
FWIW, the announcer at the Rhinos home game made a point of wishing Bradford well in their quest for survival, and encouraged Leeds fans to go in numbers, to support both the team and Bradford's fundraising efforts..an announcement which was greeted with applause around the ground.

Sadly posts like yours do not help to gain the respect and support Bradford needs from the wider RL community.

I believe the "Rugby league family" is a thing of the past, like big crowds at internationals and changes at the top table.

I've seen them every week for the past 25 years.

You'd bring a tear to a glass eye Adey



I have followed your pompous wind baggery on the Bulls Forum with much amusement. From your previous slavish acceptance and promotion of the Bulls management official line,....your subsequent public and very full full apology for such an erroneous point of view,..... through your almost daily changes of opinion on who is to blame since your financial crisis became public. And now your quivering bottom lip is pointed in my direction!

Your heart's in the right place Adey, but it's time to face up to reality my chubby friend, and accept that whilst Bradford Bulls will certainly continue, it may be in a lower division for a couple of seasons.

And no, I wont s if that happens, although perhaps, if I moved to Keighley I might change my point of view.....

That apology is withdrawn, as I have since discovered that I was not lied to, and that therefore no apology was required. I made the mistake of jumping to a hasty conclusion - just like the likes of you did.

At least I will apologise if I am wrong. I would never expect the likes of you to. Especially if to admit you were wrong would run contrary to the version of events you would like to convince yourselves of.

People who delight in the misfortune of others are pretty poor examples of humanity, in my opinion. Fortunately, most Leeds fans I know are not in that category.

Yeah, but your view must have been pretty well obscured by those massive chips on your shoulders.

FFS Adey, when the news of the sale of the lease broke you were telling us that your 'sources' at the Club were assuring you that it wasn't cos The Bulls were in financial trouble but to merely see off predatory approaches to take over Odsal. Well that was truthful wasn't it? And, yet, you're still ready to accept the guff coming out of the Club as gospel? Unfortunately, you and the rest of the gullible souls out there are quite likely to be shortly getting a rude awakening.

Self serving Drivel and utter crap too boot!

Since ESL began, there has been rumour after unfounded accusation of hand outs being received by the London Club with never a shred of evidence. In 2005 your CEO tried to get us kicked out of the comp when there were no rules to allow the RFL to do so.
2012 and so far you've had a back handed bail out from the RFL under the ruse of saving your pit of a ground and now you've got the begging bowl out again 7 weeks later...

I symapthise with the fans, but not your BOD, CEO or anyone who attempts to apologise for their ineptitude and bad management.

I knew the club was in financial trouble. Patently obvious from the accounts, from seeing the RFL take a charge in January 2011, from the rumours leaking out of Red Hall, from the sale of Andy Lynch and from a host of other tell-tale signs.

As far as I could see, the club was facing the prospect of the only solution being purchase by someone like Parkin (I presume the "predators" that the RFL - not the club - referred to). Someone who seemed to be more interested in getting the Odsal site, and in using the Bulls to reduce the operating costs of real-target Bradford City. The outlook for the Bulls in such circumstances seemed to me poor. Very limited money made available, and death by a thousand cuts.

The RFL's purchase of the lease seemed to stymie that as the "only" option, protecting Odsal and at the same time providing immediate funds to stabilise the financial position and allow the club to settle the image rights tax and ride out the recession until the economic climate improved.

One day the role of the council in all this will maybe become more clear. I think most of us realised that they had no real appetite for any kind of development at Odsal, however it was funded and by whom.

It was obvious that the club had been advanced monies by the RFL - the 1/11 charge was evidence of that. The club never acknowledged that, same way as other clubs that received advances on monies from the RFL have never done so. No surprises there. The terms of the advances almost certainly precluded their being made public anyway.

I expected there would be some monies to pay back - Q4 is always very lean cash-wise, so it was a no-brainer. I was shocked when I learned the amount, since that showed the club was in far worse financial straits than even cautious me had realised. Don't forget, I've been ploughing a lonely furrow for years about the Bulls' dire financial position, in the face of so many fans assuring me it must not be so!

The club did not actually lie - the sale itself was not a bail-out. The bail-out had already happened with the advances (which, as I have said, were larger than I ever imagined). Disingenuous, maybe - and yes, by me as much as by the club - but reflecting commercial necessity, I think.

The sale seemed to be - and as far as I can see, remains - a win-win. The RFL received a strategic asset at what can only have been a distressed sale price - I did keep trying to suggest that it was likely to be a good deal for the RFL, but kept getting shot down - and the club was saved from Valley Parade and IMO eventual oblivion, or more immediate oblivion if they tried to stay put at Odsal.

Did the club lie to me? I cannot see that they did. Were they disingenuous? Without a doubt. Did I realise they were being disingenuous? Those who know me will attest to that. Was I shocked how bad the financial position really was, and therefore at the degree to which they had been disingenuous, albeit through necessity? Absolutely. Are there still unanswered questions about all this? Most definitely, and I listed a load out for reference for a meeting we have with the board in the next day or two. Do I think this Pledge business is the best way for everyone to solve the problem? Of course not; but in the time frame I have concluded it looks to be the ONLY way.

BUT...do I think that allowing the club to go into administration, seeing the back of the present 3-man board and the crazy shareholding stasis that is one underlying cause of the problems, would be a better outcome than trying to plug the current funding gap now and holding the inquest afterwards when matters are less pressing? In the absence of even the slightest hint of a prepack waiting in the wings, and given the massive risks of too many assets being lost for good in a protracted administration - no, I do not.

And that, my friends, is why I have formed the view that I have.

In 2005 you went into liquidation, taking the taxpayer for £1/2m in unpaid taxes. Bulls are trying to avoid doing precisely that. London, Crusaders and Wakey all took the taxpayer for large sums of unpaid tax. If this comes off, Bulls will not.

Our CEO in 2005 was Gareth Davies. You clearly mean our then-chairman, Caisley. Most people will be aware of my views on his stewardship over the latter part of his tenure. But the reason he wanted London kicking out was because of the unpaid taxes. His stated view was why should other clubs have to pay the taxes they have collected from employees, customers and spectators, when London could get away with it and thereby secure an advantage by rising immediately like a phoenix?

You will see in my post above that I say that anything is preferable in my mind to administration. Want to know one more big reason why? Because I would be totally embarrassed to support a club that had just ripped off the taxpayer. Write that down someplace, so that IF the Bulls should fall over, and IF perchance I am wrong and something DOES rise from the wreck, you cans see if I practise what I preach.

I also wonder just how the likes of you can know for certain that the Bulls' present situation is due to "ineptitude and bad management"? You are presuming that by responding to the symptoms. You can have no idea as to the causes. Bloody good job you are not a doctor.

........

If the Bulls need to get their hands on 500k or face admin, then how else has this happened other than through ineptitude or bad management?
Did the RL pixies steal away in the night with the money?

As for the doctor quip.......if the patient won't tell me the truth as to how they got ill, then I have little option other than to go on what I see.......and in this case, I see a club in financial trouble and I will call it as I see it!

Except the patient told you.

The bank called in the overdraft, totally unexpectedly. It looks like RBS, charged with de-risking and shrinking its balance sheet, took the opportunity to do a bit of just that. I know FOR A FACT that RBS have been seeking to get out of lending anything to RL clubs. And if I told you everything I know on this, from totally outside of the Bulls, you would no longer have any doubts, I suspect.

The RFL required repayment of an advance that the club believed they had the use of for the rest of the year. Quite WHY they did not tie the RFL down on something they seem to have relied on has not been satisfactorily explained, and on that score, even though they believed they had an agreement, they are probably vulnerable.

The figures for these have not been put in the public domain, but from the numbers I have been told are apparently considerably higher in aggregate than the £500k stated as being required urgently to plug the hole.

And I know, from hearing the view about both of these actions from the horse's mouth, just how angry they are about both. No club without a sugar daddy could withstand a sudden reduction of its cash resources on this scale. Probably in either hemisphere.

London has Hughes. Just imagine the consequences if you did not? Yet I do not hear you saying London have been financially mismanaged? I could say that any club, like London, that would go out of business the day the sugar daddy pulled the plug has clearly been financially mismanaged, since it relies on a funding source that could cease if it got hit by a bus/divorce/attack of the wobblies/whatever. Is that any more unreasonable than what you have accused Bulls of?

The patient told you what was wrong. You failed to make the correct diagnosis.

Full disclosure? I beg to differ.


Call it an overdraft, call it a loan, the bank has a duty to its shareholders and if the "debt" was seen as having been at risk, then they are within their rights to demand it paid.
I run a business and I do not rely on a bank loan, overdraft facility or a credit card......because I run my business well and don't spend what I can't afford. Neither to I spend on projected revenues..


As I said, withing their right to do so and the club were wrong to rely on access to this cash.



ineptitude maybe? Bad Management possibly?


So again the question arises, if this is all someone else fault, why not publish the FACTS?



I post daily that London is a badly managed club and possible the worst run business I have ever come across. We rely 100% on David Hughes and this is not a good recipie......it will end in tears, but as the song says...

"Who's sorry now?"


NOPE
It's like the patient telling me they have a headache but neglecting to tell me they got hit over the head with a cricket bat.............

.....I still don't know the amount, the reseoning behind not questioning the RFL and the Bank in their actions and why, after many years of being a debt free club, the patient finds themself in this position.

I think a lot of fans share those views. When Keighley had problems a lot of us were not happy bunnies over the outcome, not least because the clubs actions end up potentially stuffing local business that has supported them. I think the incoming board made a pledge to pay off "what they could when they could" but have no idea how that worked.

By my reckoning the Bulls have received the thick end of £2 million from the RFL. Does anyone have a clue how this fairly substantial sum has been spent? We can assume that £700k went straight back into Redhalls coffers to pay off their very discreet loan, and it was the sale of the Odsal lease which triggered the reduction in overdraft facilities by their bank, But does anyone actually know where all the remainder has gone?

Apparently, the current 500K begging bowl is simply to pay the staffs' salaries for April, and allow them in the short term to fulfill their obligations. Any shortfall will almost certainly be made up with yet another loan on the quiet from the RFL. Expect to hear much patting on backs from Odsal come Friday as the "unexpected" news is released to an astonished, but grateful Bradford public. There may even be fireworks!

I'd not worry to much either as to the long term prospects of the Bulls. There's a local boy called Mr Steve Parkin who could easily purchase them with the loose change in his pocket, and was sniffing around Wakey last year.

A small, but significant result of all this, will be the pleasing sight of Adeybull reverting to his normal colour....

Sorry Adey, I thought I had posted for the final time on this subject but this posts once again takes the biscuit. This moral high ground nonsense over HMRC & tax is just that, nonsense, and you are using this as an excuse to justify the whole direction the current BOD have taken to emotionally blackmail money out of Bulls and other clubs fans.

You then go one step further and effectively castigate and vilify three other clubs and, even worse, their fans for 'their' going into administration and what you then calling 'ripping off the tax payer'.

You really need to climb down off your high horse as clearly the lack of 02 is clearly effecting you ability to think straight!

The only people that are to potentially to blame for HMRC being out of pocket are the people who have the legal obligation within company law to ensure that the business pays it's taxes on time and fully are the director of that company. Simple as that! No, ifs, buts, or maybes.... in message board parlance that is a FACT!

The Bulls fans, the London fans, the Crusaders fans and the Wakey fans don't owe the tax man any money or should not feel in anyway obligated to bail out their club for it's directors and managements failure to pass on the money they paid the club in taxable income terms & VAT already which they to pass on, for whatever reason, to HMRC.

Administration and insolvency law, as you should know supposedly being an accountant, is structured in the way it is for good reason and an acceptance that companies can't always survive and as such companies will become insolvent, possibly owing and unable to pay HMRC & the tax payer money it owed and also other companies with which it traded. This is real life and this is real business! What you fail to acknowledge is that that business has most probably paid out millions of pounds during many previous years of successful trading to HMRC, as is required to keep trading, and that if a business does unfortunately become insolvent any amount left owing is relatively small in percentage terms to the tax generated for the exchequer and paid by that business up to that point. Equally, and Wakefield is a case in point, may continue to generate tax revenue for the exchequer going forward if the burden of previous debt and mismanagement is removed from a new potential owner if rescued from administration... that is why the administration process exists to ultimately SAVE future tax revenue, jobs and income that generate other taxes to be paid to the exchequer. So, in Wakefield's case the new company will already have paid more money to the exchequer than they lost and will now continue to do so for many years and many more times over going forward as an on-going viable concern.

So, if I was to take the moral high ground like you and, given the fact that I think even with this £1m they are going to be unable to continue to run a sustainable business in the longer term saddled with this debt and continued mismanagement, then in actual fact I could accuse you and any fans that support this measure as the ones that are likely to be doing HMRC & the tax payer out of much needed income going forward! Indeed by letting the current business go under and either be brought out of admin or start again as a new business, then this is very likely to be the best way to continue to generate money for the exchequer and in fact you are probably ultimately the ones going to be 'ripping off the tax payer'?

Stop using this as an excuse and furthermore apologise to the fans of the clubs that you have backhandedly accused of having low morals because they didn't follow a hair brained scheme similar to the one the Bulls BOD are now running!

Read what I said, and the context in which I said it.

He was accusing the club of being seriously mismanaged, when he can have no idea of the circumstances. He may or may not be right, but its a bit of a bold statememt to make without being party to the actual facts, would you not agree?

He is a London supporter, and was complaining about how London have been treated by elements of the so-called Rugby league Family. So I threw back at him that London, and those other clubs that failed leaving large tax debts unpaid, were surely seriously mismanaged too then, by his reckoning? The difference being that the Bulls BOD were striving to avoid the situation that hit those clubs (and others I could have named like Widnes). Yet he insisted - based solely on the symptoms - that the Bull's BOD must be guilty of "ineptitude and bad management" as if it had never happened before. My point is that - judging as he did, by the symptoms alone - there were plenty worse historic examples.

In particular, he threw back against the Bulls and their fans the actions of our former Chairman. Sauce for the goose, pal. Yet I don't see you castigating him for throwing at us something that was nothing to do with either the fans or the current BOD?

And it can anyway only be your opinion that what the Bulls are doing to seek to avoid administration is a "hair-brained scheme". At least they are trying something. Nowhere have I said that other clubs should have done the same, and nowhere have I asked supporters of other clubs to support it. I have not even asked Bulls fans to support it, saying instead it can only be a personal decision.

And as for my comment about being embarrassed to support a club that had - yes, ripped off the taxpayer, because how else can you define using money that was never your own to finance your business, and then not be able to repay it? - that was me speaking about how I feel. Me. And have done for years, and have said precisely that on the record on many occasions on here. If you wish to read in to that that I was castigating those other clubs and their fans, that is your affair. But I was not and never would. I was talking about how I would feel if Bulls did it. And I'm telling the truth, since in all honesty I fear I would struggle to look the fans of clubs like Leeds and Saints and Wigan and Wire in the face if we did without feeling shame and embarrassment. That is how I expect to feel, because it is an issue I feel strongly about and because I wanted to make it clear that you would see no hypocrisy from me should the Bulls end up perpetrating what in my mind is little short of theft.

And, let me say it again: virtually all of the unpaid taxes when a sports club fails are [umonies that were never their own[/u. Other than Employers' NIC, they are monies that they deducted from employees or collected from customers and spectators on behalf of HMRC. [uThey were never the clubs monies to use in the first place[/u. If you let someone else go gollect debts owed to you, then he went bust not having repaid you and you found he had been using your money and it was no longer there, how would YOU feel? And of course it is all down to the BOD of the clubs at the times they failed. And of course I am well aware of that. So why the hell accuse me of castigating clubs and fans when I neither did nor implied any such thing?

I have levelled no accusations at any other fans, so I have nothing whatsoever to apologise for. Rather, I suggest it is me that is deserving of an apology for your totally unjustified accusations.

Apologies if it has been asked already/recently - is there any indication as to whether the pledge target looks likely to be achieved?