The facts don't lie. If you take the trouble to check them out. Go look at the accounts. Then go call off the accounts of the other SL clubs over recent years.

And as for me being in a position to comment about the circumstances at that time, if you are smart while you are on the Companies House website you will be able to work out why.

Now, are we fighting facts with facts, or just derision? Because you are worried about acknowledging the truth?

Incidentally, I have known Ryan for years. Well before he got to the poisoned chalice of a position he holds now. And I am a lot lot older than him too.

Please accept my apologies to you and many other Bradford fans. I have not malice against you or your club, and I fully felt your pain 13 years ago when my club nearly disappeared were literally hours from going put of business. I also recall my club having to sell off it's prize assets in the late '80's due to rank bad miss management but at the time the sport was genuinely tin pot.

My point about Bradfords situation is, even more so now you have openly stated you were involved (be careful of confidentiality issues there

) at the time, if Caisley was wracking up large losses and Hood still took over the reigns, Hood must have thought he could turn it around OR have a sugar daddy in the background. Otherwise his sporting hobby was ruling his business brain.

I have seen Financial Statements of 7 SL clubs over the last decade and unless the ones I have not looked at have had huge losses (admittedly, a possibility) then your chairman has over egged the cake with his comment, basing it around his and a couple of other clubs with poor business personnel.

Ask yourself this, if your club has been spending full cap, with stadium up keep, admin costs, et al, and you knew you were going to be in deficit, then why reduce season tickets so drastically? If it's because your previous CEO had raised expectation too much and fans were only going to turn up if your team was able to be in CC and Grand finals, yet still Hood takes charge without having a realistic business plan, then I don't see your argument.

For what it's worth, I hope your club does pull through.

I still want the fans to have a club to follow, but I would rather they weren't held to emotional ransom so as to bail out a failing administration to achieve this.

At the start of this whole saga, I too wanted the Bulls to pull through, but a combination of the begging and emotional blackmail that has been used, together with the multiple posts from ady blindly defending the ineptitude and bad management that has seen the club placed in this position, together with the constant bitching about "other clubs" folding, has altered my stance.
Yes, Bradford Bulls for ESL....but after admin and with a clean slate....not a bandaid stuck over a wound requiring 35 stitches.

Oh dear I provided evidence that the RFL own cougar park as part of their portfolio.

Poor lil dreamer



That's right numbnuts...the RFL own the lease. You really are dumb if you cannot grasp that...and you can't.

And you are so dumb you cannot work out that the RFL helping to save the Cougars does make it easier to sign plenty of players. Get one of your more intelligent friends to explain to you what your chairman's quote meant.

Now sweety you keep digging

The bulls couldn't make the payments so Wood and Lewis, having painted themselves into a corner, had to do the odsal lease deal. If Wood and Lewis want to advance £700K to a club they should use their own money or seek RFL council / SLE aproval. They did not bother and now SL clubs are biting back. Even the Bulls are not defending the rfl executives.

Sadly you seem unable to differentiate between clubs getting a single
pyment a couple of months early and a club getting £700k plus and not making repayments.

If you have proof that HKR got £700k in advanceslets see it.

Hood took over at the start of 2006. The cheap season tickets were brought in in only 2011, in response to the recession and the expected collapse in gates for 2011 after two dreadful seasons. The business plan for 2011 showed greater expected overall income - from all sources, including sponsorship - under the new model than the existing model.

The club has had to settle Harrisgate - with legal costs, you won't be looking at that much under a million quid for that - and the tax on image rights etc deals going back to the Caisley era. So that is two substantial liabilities that the present administration had to settle, that arose from the previous administration.

The club received a large cash settlement from the council under the Odsal Settlement in 2002. That was meant to cover the additional costs of the club running Odsal up to 2019. Instead, the previous administration spent a big chunk of it on buying the Coral Stand for cash - when they could have leased it over a long period - and used up the large part of the remainder to pay day to day costs. So by the time Hood took over, we had additional costs to 2019 and cash to last a couple of years.

I could go on, but these are just examples.

As far as I can see, and in my opinion, had Hood not stepped in the club was likely to go into administration since there was seemingly no-one else on the horizon. The crazy shareholding situation did not help and has been a massive hindrance to any long-term solution anyway. My own belief is that Caisley could see this coming and would have sought to have bought the assets of the administrator. But that can only be my opinion. This by the way would have denied both Leeds and HMRC of the payments I referred to above, payments that the current administration has done its level best to honour.

I hold no brief for Hood. I think his PR has been poor, and I think the club is desperately short of senior bodies to share the load that the BOD and Duffy carry, to the best of their ability. But I feel that all the criticism about the club having no business plan or incompetence or whatever is highly ill-conceived. The recession, some poor seasons, being hamstrung by the shareholdings and the legacy from the past administration finally caught up with them.

And yes, just the same as has happened to numerous other clubs in the past. Our situation is far from unique.

I presume you have looked at the accounts of Huddersfield and London and Saints in recent years? To name but three? Wire until they came heir to the stadium. HKR? Wakey pre Glover? If |I had time I'd put a table of results up. Over several years, the only clubs you saw a profit out of in some combination were Bulls, Hull FC (with some questionable accounting) and Leeds IIRC. Wire later on in the piece.

Unlike some people, whilst I detest being lied to I can live with it - because it happens all the time in business, and if you get upset about it you may as well pack up. But what I really cannot live with is injustice. That is why I have been so vociferous about this whole issue - I believe that, in the main, the wrong people are being blamed.

What I CAN stand, and very much appreciate, is the good wishes of other fans. Thank you for yours. I fear that, especially after Caisley's ill-timed intervention on Thursday, we may well need it.

Be fair Adey, Bradford had won the GF in 2005 after famously spending a fortune bringing Adrian Morley back for a couple of months, and broke the SC in both 2005 and 2006 and in that time found guilty of conduct prejudicial to the game. I personally think you may be giving Mr Hood a bit too much of the benefit of doubt, but whoever you want to blame for the mess Bradford find themselves in, the RFL are blameless.

Actually, as I understand it Morley played for nothing beyond prize money. Seems he wanted to retain his fitness for the internationals. But maybe I was lied to? Caisley era, incidentally.

Bulls broke the salary cap because someone convinced the salary cap auditor that payments made to Harris by pub operator Publico for image rights should be treated as if paid for by the club and so subject to the cap. The same salary cap auditor judged Scully being paid in similar circumstances by Gillette did not breach the cap, in the same way whe Harris was paid by Tissot when playing for Leeds THAT did not breach the cap either. Strange but true. Bulls were of course in serious dispute over Harris at the time. Bulls received the minimum possible punishment.

Where in my comments did I seek to blame the RFL?

Incidentally, I have never made any secret of whom I hold ultimately responsible for how we got into this mess. And it is not Hetherington or Leeds, or the RFL, or Harris, or McNamara. Or Hood.

It's now a conspiracy is it


You're a lunatic Adey....I applaud you for your one-eyed defence of your club, but jesus wept.....Bradford Broke the cap...don't try and paint it as anything other than that.....

The RFL do not own Cougar park, the Co-op do. The RFL own the lease, Keighley own the underlease but that was never in dispute.

You were shooting from the hip for dramatic effect and got it wrong. And now you're wriggling.

You implied the RFL "took over" which has a quite different connotation to them being the middle man in getting Keighley a new lease. Then by reference to an irrelevant brinkmanship by John Kear asserted that this relationship must have made Keighley rich and that Cougars were now the "Manchester City" of the championship.

This is absolute bollox.



Make your mind up. You have just said you "have provided evidence that they own cougar park" now your saying they only hold the lease.





Ah, good old name calling. As I've said - that the RFL own the Lease is not in dispute and is fairly common knowledge. I'd call you numbnuts but you clearly don't have any.




Ah, more insults

You do realise that Keighley went bust straight after signing the underlease don't you. So whatever the [ithen[/i Chairman said about "help" obviously didn't help.

What has happened post administration is down to the efforts of the new board and in particular to the new coach Jason Demetriou. We let players go, and brought new ones in. Tadulala is on match terms only and Sam Obst and Michael Korkidas came not only because they are friends with the coach but because they were found full time jobs within the local community programme. Something that they think will help with their career post RL.

Go get one of your more intelligent friends to explain the situation, what's that, you don't have any? Understandable.

I'm sure I can smell mints somewhere, strange.

How did you put it? "Now sweety you keep digging"

Wow you really are digging








As you cannot grasp that owning a very long term lease - for decades - is ownership. you are slow.


the RFL own your ground and without them you were completely stuffed. Live with the facts lil dreamer.

I am enjoying your increasingly desperate attempts to pretend you were not significantly bailed out by the RFL...so come on now...dig some more, you can't resist.

So what you are saying is that Keighley, who have a very long term underlease, for decades, actually have ownership. Why didn't you say that in the first place.






Wow! It must be crowded down there what with the Co-op, the RFL and Keighley all owning the same ground.

I am enjoying your increasingly desperate attempts to wriggle out of the bollox you are talking...so come on now...dig some more, you can't resist. :LOL



As usual with most keyboard warriors, you shoot from the hip, then add 2 plus 2 and get 5.

blah blah....blah

I provided specifics and even quotes from your own chairman and you are still in denial...oh dear



Seems you have an itch you just can't scratch lil dreamer.

Come on now....dig some more.....you can't resist

I said that the RFL recovered the money in full. They have. In other words the RFL are not 'propping up' the Bulls right now. Wood and Lewis didn't seek approval because no approval was required. You seem to be particularly struggling with this point. If the members of the council felt that approval should be requested in cases like this then they should have built the requirement for such approval into the RFL constitution and/or operating rules. They didn't. Tough.

A loan is a loan. The funds came from the same source - SKY money for TV rights negotiated by the RFL - and were lent for the same reasons - cash flow problems. In all cases that money has now been paid back. In the case of the Bulls they liquidated a material asset - the Odsal lease - in order to do so but it's been paid back nonetheless. There is no material difference apart from scale and no amount of ill-informed wittering by your good self will change that.

You are just talking more bollox to back up a failed argument. The only one in denial is you - you shoot from the hip like a true internet troll then try and make out you really said something else, and that you've proved a point that no one else is disputing ..... oh dear



For the umpteenth time, I have never denied that the RFL own the lease at Cougar Park. You know this but are just trying to wriggle some more and hope that if you say it long enough people will get bored and you'll think in your own small mind that you've had the last word and therefore "won". Good for you.

Your original assertion was that the RFL "took over" which resulted in Keighley being "the Manchester City of the Championship". As I've already said, bollox.

You spectacularly failed to realise that in-between the RFL helping negotiate a new lease and the nonsensical statement from John Kear, that Keighley went into administration, the Chairman was declared an unfit and proper person, and a new board formed. So even if the RFL gave Keighley a shed load of money (which they didn't) it had no benefit to the new club.

You used Keighley as part of an argument to have a go at the RFL and you're just plain wrong.

Keighley quite rightly used every assistance available to them to make sure that a piece of prime real estate continued to be used for rugby and not more shopping development.

PS - by your definition keighley own their own ground.

the Majority of professional sport rely on wealthy backers, If you took wealthy backers out of Premiership football 90% of them would go to the wall next week.
what we see in these three ' statements ' is an opportunistic attempt at power brokering to drive the reduction in clubs in SL, not in some altruistic way to promote the sport but to carve up the Sky funds 12 ways instead of 14.

effectively the RL has abandoned the sport outside of it's Sky funded elite to fend for itself for the past 17 years.

sickening self-aggrandisement on behalf of Macmanus especially.

Maybe the SL chairmen voted on the ridiculous SL Stobart sponsorship as it was the only one on the table? Can't believe they have effectively given away the naming rights of the competition for a bit of contra advertising.

I don't believe the running of the game is all bad by any stretch but the RFL does seem to be failing in bringing money into the game at the top level and generally raising the profile of the sport across the country. The Crusaders farce and the license joke hasn't helped them.

The sooner Lewis and Wood go the better, totally agree of the concerns of the chairmen so far.
Lewis and Wood have basically "asset stripped" the profile of our sport. The marketing and media model these two have set up is a complete joke to the extent that no blue chip or rich backers are interested in a sport with no media presence.
We have a Superleague overloaded with average overseas players from 5 to 12 players per team at cost. Our sport expansion model is now confined to the outer reaches of Manchester. The Stobart deal is the epitome of ineptness yet Lewis and Wood tells us it will benefit the game by £2.5 million..........bells on the other one.

They need to get SL on FTA, don't care how or what short term pain from Sky the game suffers, without FTA TV coverage sport is irrelevant.

There wouldn't be a SuperLeague, in any shape or form, without Sky.

Aye, that [url=http://www.premierleague.com/en-gb/matchday/broadcast-schedules.htmlPremiership Football[/url stuff other people talk about has really suffered from the lack of free-to-air matches.

Hardly the same given the amount of covg it gets on FTA, even if it isn't full games plus print media covg.

Majority of the country barely know RL exists let alone watched a game.

The RFL desperately needs a new regime. The main question has to be, how can a club be given a franchise and then 6 months later it's going into administration?

Secondly we need to get rid of the inherent Yawkshire bias at the RFL. I mean, we've had several Lancs clubs railroaded into getting new stadia - and what are they building over the other side of the Pennines? FFS, when you've got Headingly and Hull KR getting premier event then you know there's a problem

FTA needs to start putting up the £££ for super league. BBC has the challenge cup and its not like they promote it well. There SL highlights show is on at a silly time also!

Sky do a great job and without them SL would have died years ago.

If that were the case then explain why the two Hull clubs (at least) voted against it?