I struggle to see how the bulls match day revenue can pay all the bills. Falling attendances propped up with too cheap season tickets and free tickets to schools. I would imagine you are close to cap space and not sure that what you take match day would cover everything

Incompetence to forget that selling the long term lease on the ground would have consequences on the security for the credit facilities of the club is not "unexpectedly".

No effect at all, since that lease would have no value as security in the event of insolvency - reverts to the council, and neither the club nor an administrator could assign without the council's permission. As I have said loads of times.

So what prompted the bank to suddenly change the terms it was offering to the Bulls?

The need to downsize its balance sheet (on which it payes levy to the government) and de-risk its loan-book, to make it a more attractive proposition for the governemnt to sell our stake at niot too big a loss, to reduce the need for more tax rises and spending cuts?

Their stated aim (as told to me ftf by a senior RBS official not that long ago) to exit from lending to RL clubs, for which sector they no longer had any appetite?

They put loads of sponsorship into Union?

It was the wrong time of the month?

Answers on a postcard, please, since the club professes to have no idea either.

The highlighted word being the operative one; I can't imagine a scenario in which a bank withdraws a facility on that scale from a business customer, without some dialogue.

I can - seen it happen. Indeed, the first time was when I was 17, and to a pig farmer client. He subsequently shot himself.

Usually on a pretext that does not really hold water, but allows the bank to give an excuse of sorts - they ARE very mindful of their PR, ATEOTD.

You usually get e.g. 30 days to pay down the facility, and the bank takes everything you pay in as an immediate reduction in available facility. This means you are effectively prevented from making any payments, since the facility drops £ for £ as you pay monies in. IIRC Ryan pretty well said on radio leeds yesterday teatime that that was what had happened, in as many words.

Why cant Bradford borrow against the guaranteed future Sky money?

My issue with whats happening currently is that the BoD seem to me begging for a cash injection to cover a short-term cash flow issue. They shouldnt need a cash injection to cover a short-term cash flow issue, they would need a loan. What i would worry about is that what is fans giving £500k to the BoD is being framed as giving £500k to the club. Which is an awful lot of money for a company which has no real assets and turns over only £3-4m a year.

If we are honest £1m is probably a higher figure than the Bulls are worth. Im troubled by the fact that when this is all finished the same people will own the same business in the same proportion surely there should be a commitment from the board to dispose of their shares in a trust or something, it has to be unacceptable for them to either continue to hold or even sell their shares until that £1m is either paid back to those who pledged or put back into the club.

It needs to be transparent that this £1m is to protect Bradford Bulls from administration, not to protect the investment of the current shareholders.

Sound post.

The injection is to replace the bank faility and the part of the RFL loan that the club did not believe it had to repay now.(separate issue as to how those circumstances arose in teh first place). As such, yes its obvious that - in the normal course of events - the club would look to replace loans A and B with new loan C.

Except...looks like (in common with most RL clubs unless they have come heir to a load of bricks and mortar or have a wealthy owner) no-one sees the club as a half-decent credit risk. I guess you can thank the numerous RL and other sports clubs that have fallen over in recent years for that, including of course Bradford City. So the RFL will have been the lender of last resort, and so if THEY pull out...nowhere else to go. and the loans from the RFL will surely have BEEN against future Sky monies.

Hence, I presume, the appeal to the fans and others.

In a more normal situation, this money would be sought as new share capital. But of course the club could not offer new shares to the public without first converting to a plc and then issuing a prospectus. Even if it passed the requirements for doing those things, it would take months.

Raising loans from the public would be equally fraught - if not more so.

So you are left with donations. Rightly or wrongly, and for better or for worse. Its a hell of a crap way to run a railroad, except for all the other ways right now which look even worse.

Of course, the club should subsequently tell all the pledgers that, at a point in the future, what they have paid in WILL be converted into shares, in recognition of what they did. Whether anything like that will happen is of course a different story.

There remain a number of unanswered questions. I remain hopeful that this is because the board still does not fully get the need to communicate more detail rather than for any other reason. As i say, I remain hopeful...

But I agree entirely about the shares goimng into a trust, so that any subsequent proceeds revert either to the club or to those who pledged. BUT...the board hold only 20% of the shares. THAT is probably a root cause of all the problems anyway. The remaining 80% are held by former directors, including Caisley at 26%, and a raft of small shareholders from the last time all this happened in 1963/4. How do you set about persuading THEM to forgoe their shares? What is in it for them, given that at the moment their "worthless" shares might be worth a bit if someone wanted to seize control (however unlikely that is, given you'd expect them to be sitting waiting to get the assets off an administrator).

So that is my take. We may get to know the whole picture in the fullness of time...or maybe not!

Thats fair enough,

I do think though that the BoD and the shareholders should be a bit more forthcoming with their sacrifices.

You need to tell RBS they have been lying in public then. Why they would do that given the reputational risk (yes I know, don't laugh) involved doesn't make sense.

I don't need to

As near as they can, given RBS are still the club's bankers, [url=http://www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/5791/BULLS%20CHAIRMAN%20CLARIFIES%20CLUB%27S%20BANKING%20RELATIONSHIP=#800000the club already has.[/url

Which goes full circle to my original point when you posted that very same statement, it comes down to who you believe, and RBS have nothing to gain by lying in public.

1. London, as I have repeated to you were and are still a badly managed business........but we're not up the creek at the moment, your lot are and therefore, you attempting to deflect away from the issue under discussion carries no weight!
2. The current situation your club finds itself in is 100% down to bad management...no matter how many other people you try to blame, the accounts of the Bradford Bulls are the responsibility of the Bradford Bulls. You have a bill you can't pay...........what else is that other than bad management and/or ineptitude?
3. Symptoms "shrimptons"..........the FACT is the Bulls messed up.


Best served cold is an expression I rarely use, but I will make an exception here. For 10 years I have defended my club from accusations of everything with the exception of child abuse from hoardes of fans from the north. None of these accusations carried weight or evidence........so when the opportunity arises, I will batter you if I choose to. I have already said I feel for the fans, but not the club......regardless of the personel involved.







as I said...You did everything apart from accuse London of stealing milk from northern babies mouths by flipping for the Inland Revenue..........

Your morals have no place here or in the real cold hard and nasty world. Businesses go under daily......the vast majority of these have no option and they do so because they were badly managed, as in London 2005.........

Bradford have no right to ask anyone for a cent until EVERYTHING is explained, in full and a list of precautions are put in place to ensure they don't flip anyway.....


Bd management and Ineptitude maybe?


Really?




I am sorry. I am sorry I ever got involved in a debate with you about this, because whilst your loyalty to your club is to be applauded, your logic is off the wall.

Asking the public for 500k to stop you going under is apparently the result of years of good business practice and not bad management and ineptitude...

I wonder whether George Galloway will lift a finger to save Blackburn Bulls?

No, but he might gently lap a saucer of milk.

He will do whatever he can to gain publicity, so you can expect to see him in a Bulls shirt at some point (and the day after, a city shirt, and the day after that a Taliban outfit, then a Kilt..........)

Blackburn?

[url=http://www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/bradford-cannot-look-to-rfl-to-bail-them-out-again-after-ground-sale-1-4411686=#800000This[/url piece seems to me to explain more than anything that has come out of the club so far. It pretty well accords with my understanding too, and if not my understanding then my deductions. Some of you will like how it makes reference to a degree of previous "mismanagement" and the spin it was clear put on the Odsal lease sale - neither of which, despite what some have tried to insist, I have sought to deny (especially regarding then previous regime) just to endeavour to explain to those prepared to listen. And I am glad that the club is now acknowledging publically what they have told me for several years, which is they made a dreadful mistake in 2002 in not taking out a long-term loan for the Coral Stand.

ask and thee shall receive;

[i"George Galloway, the newly-elected Respect MP for Bradford West, has pledged to the campaign and is expected to attend Friday’s game at Odsal."[/i

[url=http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/sport/sportbulls/9627525.Bulls_chairman_Hood_in_plea_to_Bradford_businesses/Latest local paper depression report[/url

Friday nights game could be....interesting at least.

Budgeted for crowds of 16000? What planet are Mr. Hood and his cronies living on? That's more than Wigan and Leeds get.

19,275 last year in April....I can see them beating that.....but the emotional blackmail leaves a bitter taste in the mouth.

Are you referring to "Having budgeted for a crowd of 16,000" from the article? If so, I read that as being a possible attendance for the Bradford-Leeds derby this Friday rather than for several other Bradford crowds.

Thats correct, budgeted for 16,000 for the Leeds good Friday game, not any other game. Which it now looks like we'll exceed comfortably. They are clarifiying that any cash from attendance over the budgeted for income (16,000) will go towards the pledge as they had said previously that the Leeds attendance cash would not aid the pledge.



...tell me about it...

Yes, sorry - with it now.

Enjoyed reading a thread on Facebook with fans turning on others because they hadn't donated to the cause.

Do people still really believe that there will be no rugby league played in Bradford if they don't raise the £500k/£1m/£whatever the total is this week? Businesses owning sports clubs the size of Bradford have gone to the wall before and, miraculously, another company comes along and the club still keeps going. Why would it be different in this case?

As I said earlier, no chance of Bradford Bulls (or a team called Bradford playing Odsal) not being in SL next year.