Just a point. Neither OK Bulls, BB2014 nor any other company have been docked points by the RFL.

The sports club playing as Bradford Bulls in Super League has been docked points. Who owns the club or company is irrelevant in this context.

Khan didn't put the Bulls into admin...Green did.

Green has benefitted massively by taking full ownership of the club, debt-free.

The sports club Bradford bulls only exist as a playing entity of the company who owns the golden share and as such membership of the RFL and SL. Who owns the club is not irrelevant. Who owns the club IS the Bradford bulls. 'The club' is the company which holds that share, it doesn't exist outside of it.

The member of the RFL at Leeds is leeds CF&A ltd, trading as Leeds Rhinos rugby football league club. Under the RFL's articles of association leeds rhinos RLFC do not exist outside Leeds CF&A ltd.

The RFLs articles define a club as "any rugby league club which is admitted by the Council as a member of the Company from time to time in accordance with these Articles; " the member is the company holding the share. The points deduction by virtue of being levied against the club, is levied against the member, in this case Bradford Bulls Northern ltd, for the actions of OK Bulls ltd in going in to admin, and against BB2014 ltd for their actions coming out.

Omar Kahn was in control of the club when it was put into admin, Marc Green was a creditor and not under the jurisdiction of the RFL. The RFL cannot punish someone not under their jurisdiction.

If you do want to be that picky , technically it was the court who put the company into administration and the administrator who agreed the payment to creditors. By your logic it's The judge and administrator we should be deducting points from.

Wasn't there a winding up order served on the Bulls by the HMRC, isn't it the truth that Administration was sought to protect the club from being wound up, once in Administration all the creditors are then under that process.

Hardly 'Force Majure' is it?
If you don't pay your tax bill you don't need to be Nostradamus to see what's coming!

So the sports club exists then? And can be transferred from one company to another.
When whichever company owns the sports club now bought it, they also bought any punishments due to the club. In the same way as if a Bradford player had received a ban before the club changed ownership that ban would still be current under the new owners.

It's frankly ridiculous to suggest any punishments the club receives for breaking the rules should be annulled simply because it changes ownership. Either it's new club or it isn't. If it's a new club then they can apply for a place in C1. If it's not then any punishment the club received previously applied to the club now.

Smokey, your defence of Bradford is all very laudable, however, I’ve yet to see your answer to the problem.

Say club “A” assembles a squad at a cost of £1.4M & the said club finishes twelfth in the league, but as soon as the income streams dry up, when the season ends, the club goes into administration.

Whereas club “B” has a squad costing £1M which finishes thirteenth & is relegated.

Are you of the opinion that club “A” Mk II should receive no points deduction for the following year?

If so, what’s to stop club “A” Mk III, IV, V etc., doing the same thing year after year?

Maybe you believe the owner/s of club “A” (which has gone to the wall) should be penalised financially, wouldn’t there be a slight problem, as the cupboard would be bare?

Green put the Bulls in admin as a Debenture holder. He is now directly benefitting from completely owning a debt-free Bulls.

The RFL aren't punishing "someone", they are punishing the Bulls...something you want to pretend isn't happening.

It's not picky. It's facts. And it's fair.

I don't koow if you're suggesting this was his plan, but his explanation is that admin was to protect the Bulls, as if he hadn't done so HMRC's winding up petition would have resulted in liquidation. At the time he did this Marc Green wasn't even a bidder for the Bulls and even after the original group (Moore/Calvert/Watt) pulled out he wasn't the first choice of the administrator (Lamb), so if his aim was to take over a debt free bulls it does seem a very convoluted and tricky way to do it.
Btw he's now directly "benefiting" by putting in more of his money to cover any deficit, and indeed had to provide proof to the RFL of funds to get to the season end, on a club that has little or no assets.

I wouldn't have thought that was his plan...seems a lot of uncontrollables in there.

The point made is in response to Smokey, who says Bulls don't exist and it is the people who put Bulls into admin that should be punished, not the new owners.

Well, by quirk of fate, the person who put Bulls into admin and the new owner, is one and the same - Green.

Of course, the real point is, it doesn't who owns them at any point in time - the member club (which really does exist), went into admin and it is the member club which should be penalised.

It gets better than that.
In Smokey's head an owner can rack up a fortune in debts over a period of time maybe win a cup or 2 and then enter admin, have another wide boy buy them and do the same and have this happen over and over and over again without any punishment.
Smokey's idea sounds good but it requires a time machine..................Maybe he is a massive back to the future fan and hasn't realised it's not real.

No. It doesn't. The club doesn't exist outside of the company which owns it. It is the company that owns it and cannot be transferred. The club is the company which owns the share.

If I buy a club, run up huge debts, win a trophy or two, put it into admin. Someone else then buys it, the club gets 6 points deducted. At what point have I been punished?

If I haven't, where is the deterrent to me putting the club into admin?

in answer to your question, the realities of administrations top that. Why would someone want to do that? Whilst creditors may lose out,the investor who buys the club, invests in it and puts it in to admin also loses out. Your hypothesis assumes there area queue of people wanting to lose a large amount of money buying. RL clubs and putting them into admin and the only thing stopping them is that the club may get a points penalty after they have left

Why is a 6 point deduction after I have left a punishment or deterrent to me doing that anyway?

Well, all I’ve gleaned from that reply is you’re against a point’s deduction for going into administration.

So I presume, as you haven’t come up with a solution, then a club can assemble a squad it can ill afford & go bust with no penalty.

Bradford borrowed a shed load of money from the RFL (on the quiet) they then didn’t pay back a penny piece, hence the lease situation. It should have been obvious to anyone with half a financial brain that a cost cutting exercise was required, not another cash injection.

Next up come’s OK Bulls, knowing full well they were going to receive much less in T.V revenues, once again instead of reducing costs they chose to borrow more.

I appreciate that any new owner is going to take a financial hit if the club goes under, but that’s the owner’s choice, creditors on the other hand expect financial remuneration for their services & not two bob in the pound.

However, the back-drop to all this is, other clubs are trying to compete in the same league, yet in your world that’s “tough titty” – no point penalising anyone.

None of the thing a you have listed here are deterred by a points deduction.

Had last year been a relegation year, Salford and London would still have been relegated, Bradford would still be in SL. it would still be 'tough titty' and those who went in to admin still would not be punished, The 6 point deduction changed nothing. It achieves none of the things you want.

If I buy a club. Run up huge debts, survive against relegation, then go into admin, if you give a 6point deduction, a million point deduction or a zero point deduction, other clubs have still been relegated and I have still received no punishment.

But you’re not coming up with a suitable alternative.

What else can the governing body do? It’s not like they can impose financial penalties, as the company has gone down the pan.

Yet once again, the game gets a few more damaging media inches & countless companies get shafted.

This season is the only year where a point’s deduction may have a damaging effect on a club. Finishing bottom in the Licence Years was an irrelevance & next season a SL club could finish on minus a trillion points at the end of the first part of the season, yet still stay in SL, come the gimmicky play-offs.

A one up, one down would have done the trick.

Maurice Lindsay took all of Wigan's trophies with him when he left the club. Club didn't exist outside of his ownership you see.

As far as I see it, the points deduction is a payment for keeping a clubs status. The new legal entity behind the club inherits the old clubs status within the RFL structures.

The new legal entity can choose to form a club completely independent of the old one, at which point they would be expected to apply to the RFL for membership and will start from it's lowest tier. There will be no points deduction because the new legal entity would not benefit from the inheritance of the old clubs status within the game.

Inheritance of status for a new legal entity should not be a given, because they are not the same entity as previously and should be treated as such. Thus the choice for a new entity is to accept the previous clubs status and accept a points deduction as payment, or they form a new club in the lowest tier and work from there.

Quite straightforward and quite fair IMO.

It is absurd how so many people can't understand a pretty simple concept.

To inflict a 6 point sanction on a defunct company would indeed be absurd. It would be utterly ridiculous. Why? Because unless a new owner comes along, there won't be any club playing anywhere. That is why sanctions are applied to the owner.

Now you might WANT there to be a fixed penalty system, but there isn't; the RFL under the present rules takes a number of factors into account.

You might think they should not take anything into account, but you need to get it into your head that they do.

They did in Bradford's case. Once Moore & Co. had walked, after giving the RFL a very public bagging, the RFL issued a statement which made it crystal clear that they had taken into account the proposals by BB2014 in regards to paying creditors, and the HMRC debt, that they were not satisfied with those proposals, and this being the case, it was judged fitting to deduct 6 points.

Again, whilst some might not like it, the corollary of that is very clearly that if the RFL hda been happy with BB2014's plan and proposals for the old club's creditors, then their points decision would have been less than 6. This is the relevant part of their formal statement and with respect it can't be read any other way:



So, the key point was the old company's debts and what the new owners proposed to do about them. To put it another way, shafting all the old creditors and HMRC would have "significantly impaired the integrity of the competition", and a new owner, whilst not legally [iresponsible[/i for those debts, needs to propose a solid business plan as to what they will be paying off, or else face full sanctions.

Interestingly the administrator of OKB stated that BB2014's offer included paying off all (trade) creditors in full. I never saw any mention of HMRC. The RFL were obviously (and rightly) unhappy at the prospect of HMRC being shafted, and seemingly thought there was insufficient hard evidence to back up fine words about paying creditors.

So far as I know, no announcement was ever made of what BBNL's proposals were or are re old debtors/HMRC.

The appeal was not lodged by BBNL. It was lodged by OKB, acting by the hand of its administrator. The new owners applied to RFL for permission to take over that appeal, which I gather is an unprecedented situation, but was granted. I must close by adding that the process and the little we know of the grounds make little sense to me. The sporting sanction of 6 points should never have been confirmed as it was a proposed sanction on BB2014 as owners but they never became owners. So the present position is that the new owners are stuck with a sanction proposed to be applied to the last bidders, reflecting their business/debt plan/proposals/evidence. However different you might like the process to be, you can't argue that as the process currently is, that is an unfair situation, since the proposals which directly led to the full 6 point sanction were not the proposals of the owners receiving the sanction.

Another strange aspect is that nobody has said anything about proposals or business plans, only that the general grounds for appeal are "[iforce majeure[/i". I don't follow that, but the grounds of the appeal were drafted and lodged by/on behalf of the administrator, not by BBNL, so they are presumably stuck with them.

THat isnt a good Argument in favour of a points deduction is it. Just doing something, anything, regardless of it being right, wrong, productive, useful is not a good way to run the game.



That’s an argument against relegation and the obvious downfalls of it. Its not really an argument in favour of a points deduction.

The Alternative would be to punish the owners of clubs by banning them from involvement in RL again, putting them on a ‘bad investors’ blacklist. I would be happy to look at owners being personally liable for a £100k fine should they go into admin as part of their agreement to take on the golden share.

So I’ve finally eked it out of you, blacklisted & a fine.

I'd be quite happy for Khan, Hood and Co to be blacklisted and fined.

They should be banned from entering a RL stadium and hung by their goolies from the nearest lamppost - can I have that too?

Quite. I don't know if Bradford should get any points back or not, although obviously I'd like all six back. Having said that, a deposit by the owners with the RFL of £100k or something of that ilk would make more sense to me than applying a points deduction. I can see plenty of issues with the implementation though, so who knows how that would work...

They’ll probably get an Amigo Loan, with Smokey acting as Guarantor!