He certainly is......rather than counting sheep I find it very rewarding just to read 1 of his posts to induce sleep. For that I thank him.

Julie Gaskell of Widnes has stated that the club is not a going concern. Had it not been for a £500k cash injection by SOC the club would be screwed. SOC himself has stated that four or five SL clubs are in real trouble.

But you just keep burying your head in the sand Smokey. Nothing to see here . . . . oh crap, I've just tripped over Bradford Bulls. Right, out of the way you debt-ridden fools. That's better. Right, carry on . . . .

I dont doubt it.

The game needs more money and it needs a higher profile.

Some great things have been acheived and some clubs are very very healthy, some have been left behind.

There isnt a system in the world the RFL could implement, they isnt a thing the RFL could do to stop it being the case, every sport, in every country, in the entire world suffers from exactly same problems so im not sure we can be critical in that respect.

Except possibly The NFL.

Do we copy the NFL? There are a couple of things there that are more flatcap in essence: the sharing of revenues, the draft, the salary cap, there are things that are on the other side: The 'aspirational' level that the cap is set (i.e relatively high), the extremely closed shop, 'the great expansion' the fact clubs can be picked up and moved, aswell as them being based mostly on the basis of media markets.

I agree.

joey Barton has more decorum.

When a governing body is given the power to set rules and implement specific structures within a sport, one of the 1 st things they should do before introducing these rules and structures is to ask themselves ' what if ' ? , it doesnt take a genius to realise that sports clubs by nature will once a rule or structure is introduced, immiediatley try to find a way to break that rule or exploit that structure to gain an advantage

The fact the RFL seem to struggle to do this tells us a lot about it as an organisation, a toothless wonder best describes it

With filed accounts stating a Turnover of £4.6mil in 2010 droppong to £3.9m in 2011, with the same overheads it took no brain specialist to guess what was going to give. The RFL really looked into the accounts when issuing licences out didn't they?

The £500k pledged has been and gone. YOU were told it was a bottomless pit you your pledging to and still did it. Where's the return and loyalty from the Bulls now, its gone on players wages for the last 2.5 months. You were fools to pledge, it was better to buy shares in a Newco, Well at least the Boss of Thomas Cook will be happy sitting on his £15mil wages over the last 4 years while 500 staff are made redundant

Has the collective conciousness of the VT managed to blame the RFL for the combined incompetence of an accountant who can't add up and a lawyer who doesn't understand the law yet?

The emperors clothes are now being seen for what they really are, with only his closest stooges attempting to prolong the charade.
Our game is ripped apart by the direction we have been taken, its time for change and unity by inclusiveness must be our first goal.
The Luddites on here are on borrowed time, the days of pen pushers ruling the world are gone.

Dream on.

Meanwhile, in an excerpt from the astonishing discovery of some new quatrains by Nostradamus


It has been sent to the cryptic poet, Eric Cantona, who is currently on a trawler tracking seagulls, to see if he can make any sense of it.

Those questioning how the Bulls were granted a license are presumably flabbergasted that Greece was ever allowed into the Eurozone.

The franchise process involves a review of business plans alonside some basic financial checks, not an in-depth root-and-branch investigation of the commercial viability of the applicant. If someone wants to obfuscate they will do. They'll eventually be found out by events though.

So far as I know, the Bulls did not disclose to the RFL assessors either
(a) that the following year their bank would pull their overdraft; or
(b) that the following year the RFL would buy the Odsal lease and the deal would land the Bulls with a huge VAT bill
(c) that they would not make the playoffs

They would have done, but sadly Mystic Meg has been on unforeseen long term sick leave.

The RFL wouldn't need the likes of KPMG for such an excercise, they may as well just nod their heads ?
Equally, the buying of the lease wasn't just some random "investment" to save an iconic ground from "predators", it was clearly a means of giving the Bulls some cash.
This would indicate that prior to the start of the 2012 season there was trouble at t'mill.
At this point, all parties seemed to have their collective fingers crossed and then came the request for help from supporters etc.
IMO there is no doubt that our sports governing body had knowledge of the problem but the question is, should this episode have been handled bettre ?

Regarding the huge vat bill. This wouldn't come out of the blue.
If vat was received as part of the payment for the sale of the lease, then vat would have been paid to the Bulls by the RFL, which normally would be passed on to HMRC at the appropriate time.

There were rumours circulating (can't remember whether it was here or on A.N. Other forum) back in January that Halifax had been put on three weeks' notice to be parachuted into SL as a big club was on the verge of going belly-up. Hmmm.

HAHAHAHAHA the only unity will come when you losers stop beating down the game with every opportunity. You're. just. wrong. on pretty much everything you debate as you old fart Leigh lot et al can't see past your front door.

Really. So you reckon that any old bod is qualified to do a proper comparison of detailed business plans setting out the next three years economic activity for a sports club, do you? Just drag someone in off the street to do it maybe? That's without mentioning the clear advantage in having someone independent do the work.

A proper comparison would involve a lot of work, some of it specialist.


Wrong. It was a method of getting back cash that had already been lent to the Bulls and that they had failed to pay back. Virtually 100% of the proceeds of that sale was immediately clawed back by the RFL to repay the earlier loan, leaving the Bulls with little cash and a large VAT bill.


There is little doubt that the RFL were aware that the Bulls had a cash shortfall. However, the BOD was going around assuring everyone that it was just a blip and that they could cover it. They may even have believed this to be the case. I'd guess that the first time the RFL were aware that the situation was more serious would be around the time of the Odsal sale, as they took steps at that point to retrieve their outstanding loan. From there on in things have gone downhill fast.

The problems at the Bulls are down to a mixture of incompetence and a certain degree of misfortune. I don't see what the RFL could - or rightly [ishould[/i - have done further TBH.

Sorry Kosh, I was refering to your own comment that KPMG would not have carried out a full audit or whatever.
If their checks were so thorough then how the hell was all of this missed.
OK, I now better understand the vat aspect of the deal, so thank you for that.
So you are telling me that the Bulls were loaned cash by the RFL and as this was not paid back, the loan was changed into a lease purchase, which included vat at 20 %, which wouldn't have been applicable on the loan ?

Considering the licence decision was made in early 2011, how were the RFL to know Bradfords revenue would fall by £700,000 in the rest of 2011?

A full audit of a [ibusiness plan[/i is not the same as a full audit of a clubs finances. I think this is where some people are getting confused. What KPMG do as part of the franchise process is look at the top-level financial detail and the projections contained in the business plan and produce a report on how viable it all looks [ibased on the data they are given[/i. They have no remit or authority to drill down into the finances and make a judgement on the underlying financial situation. In the case of the Bulls it's [istill[/i not clear what the true situation is and that's after weeks of investigations by all and sundry.

I made the comparison with Greece earlier. They had a far greater degree of scrutiny applied to them and [istill[/i managed to hide the true situation from the EU auditors.


Something like that, yes. Although as with most things in this affair the details aren't 100% clear. It also seems that the Bulls BOD weren't aware of the intention of the RFL to request immediate repayment of their prior loan out of the proceeds of the sale - they thought they would be making repayment over time. Or so they claimed.

TBH there is so much misinformation and rumour flying about at the moment as the old BOD and new BOD squabble in public over who was to blame for what that getting the full picture is nigh impossible. In fact the full facts may well never come out.

Thanks for the explanation Kosh.
There is still a major issue/ fault with the financial aspect of this.
If KPMG are not going into the finances thoroughly enough to spot the "hole" that the Bulls have found themselves in, then the excercise seems totally pointless.
However,as mentioned in an earlier post, the RFL obviously knew that there was a problem, or they wouldn't have a) needed to loan monies in the first instance and b) taken on the lease. So regardless of the KPMG "checks" the RFL granted the Bulls a licence, knowing that there had some difficulties which they were helping them to "overcome".

Thrush, one day you will stop scratching and embrace the wider world. That day will be life changing for you, may it come soon.

Your house to westleigh asda isn't the wider world. Hth.

No club is going to grant the RFL/KPMG the right to rummage through their finances at will. KPMG do the job that they are asked to do, and the SL clubs have the final say on what their remit is - not the RFL.

The loan was well after the licence was granted.

Look, I know that some people desperately want to pin this on the RFL somehow but this fiasco is down to the Bulls and them alone. You might also bear in mind that the 14 teams in SL are those that put forward the [ibest[/i applications - this isn't necessarily the same as them being [igood[/i applications. It's all relative.