.

Who's depressed? Bradford's plight amuses me greatly

It is to be hoped the requisite number of Bulls season ticket holders encourage enough £5 admission buddies to turn up for the eagerly anticipated and mouthwatering Catalan and London fixtures. Monthly wages are due again on Friday 30th August.

probably a TV rights/revenue payment due from the RFL 8th Aug, which would see them right up to new year I would guess.

Reduce SL to 12 (in place), reduce salary cap to 1.2 million pounds. Increase rfl grant to 1.2million pounds, condition of SL is you must pay up to full cap. Allow one marquee signing outside of cap, clubs can pay that one player whatever they want but must be approved by rfl and funds must be shown up front for payment. All SL clubs must spend min of x pounds on academies/Jnr's

Sorted.

The rfl grant is 1.3m already

Thought it was 1mill?

In that case reduce salary cap to 1.3mill, basically cap should match the grant. The club then can spend whatever other income it can generate on its infrastructure.

Clubs get their TV money in monthly installments, though they can ask for an advance if necessary.

But the Bulls general manager has gone public saying the money coming into the club is from Omar Khan personally as a result of him "releasing equity in his portfolio". In other words he's trying to remortgage his properties or something similar in order to pay the wages.

Also, didn't Bradford council lend them £200k+ about 3 months or so ago to ease a short-term cashflow problem ?

So the first one was solved with a council loan, this one by the owner "releasing equity", what happens next time ?

Exactly, and in a vain effort to spread some more knowledge of the situation (make your own judgement as to if its the truth or not), some concerned Bulls fans have responded to the clubs offer of emailing questions, myself included, and here is one of the responces from the club that has been posted on RAB by another RLfans member;

"[iI am quite concerned by recent events that have taken place over the past 4-5 days and Omar’s statement has raised a number of questions.

1) Why were players, staff and fans told that the delay in wages was down to an ‘admin error’ when this clearly was not the case.
2) Why did the Bradford Bulls give Robbie Hunter-Paul false information to pass on to all concerned parties. As you will be aware his statement assured everyone that wages would be paid on Tuesday 30th July.
3) If there is clearly no money available this month, what assurances can you provide that monthly wages etc can be paid next month.
4) The RFL has stated that money will be obtained from a 3rd party. Does this mean that the Bradford Bulls are in the process of obtaining a bank loan to cover expenditure ?
5) Why is there a lack of honesty coming from the Bradford Bulls ? As a fan I feel the Bradford Bulls have lied not just to us as fans but to the players who have worked hard to be in a position to fight for the play-offs.


Here is Ryan's reply :

Thanks firstly for your email. Here are the answers to your questions.

1 The players & staff were told of all the information at the time we had it. When the words admin error were quoted this was exactly what we had been told, nobody was intentionally misled or given false information.
2 I think the above answer, answers this question.
3 The funding issue is to cover us for the rest of this year and next, so there will be no more issues.
4 The money is coming from Omar as has all other monies received by the bulls since 1st September 2012. Omar is using equity in his portfolio to fund the Bulls.
5 There is no lack of honesty coming from the Bulls, hence why I have given my email address to all who have questions. This was and is a dynamic situation which has changed over the last few days.

I hope this answers your questions."[/i

I know there is spin/PR and the previous regime were very economical with the truth which leads to an automatic distrust of the club from some, but I have no reason not to take Ryan Whitcuts (Bulls general manager) answers above on face value, if these turn out to be false then that will change, but up to now the new club has been fairly transparent.

But no amount of talk will stop people who want to revel in the Bulls (or the games)problems, and they are geniune problems, the only thing that will stop that is a period of stability and growth without these issues. As a Bulls fan Im hopeful but wary.

Which says plenty about you!!

Well Hull KR would be.



Leeds and Wigan (and at least for now, Salford) would be spitting feathers over being further stifled.

And one or two, most obviously London, would still not be 'sustainable'.

I know it is fashionable to knock the RFL, and I've done my share, but they're trying to do a jigsaw with pieces that don't fit together properly and don't necessarily even want to make the same picture.

RL has grown and evolved erratically, messily. With a blank canvas or a settled will amongst the clubs a rational, uncontroversial system would be possible. We don't have that though, so we get fudges and compromises.

Perhaps we should ignore what we have, decide what we want as a sport and make clubs fit around the system rather than vice versa. We could have a clear, single, holistic vision. Lots of noses would be put [iseriously[/i out of joint though, and nobody really has the political capital to push it through. And it'd be as likely to fail spectacularly as be a wonderful success.

The game is crying out for strong leadership. We can have a pop at the RFL for the game's woes, but (low as I rate them), there's something in the defense of "well, the clubs are an unmanageable rabble, what are we supposed to do?". A lot of RFL-defenders point the finger at club chairpersons being the problem. It may well be the case that various chairpersons are a pain in the backside and act in a damaging self-interested (and possible even self-defeating) way...BUT...wishing that it were any different is no more useful than those people who say "its the fans' fault that attendances are low". It's sort of a non-argument - technically it's correct in a sense, but its completely useless as the basis of a strategy. Fans will be fans, and chairmen will be chairmen, that's the environment the RFL leadership has to operate in. It won't change, so trying to change it is like going to the toilet outdoors facing the wind.

It's not an easy job to manage a rabble of clubs, but that is precisely why whoever is running RFL has to be an impressive individual who is able to win the confidence of a majority ('all' is too ambitious) of clubs. For me, there are two prerequisites before clubs will respect the person in charge. First, they MUST be able to bring in a sponsor for the two main competitions. Second, they must indicate a willingness to take responsibility for failure. (e.g. in relation to the first point, I would like to see a new leader of the RFL, who, on their first day, said "I will have a sponsor in place within 6 months. If I don't, then I'm clearly not as good as I think I am, and will resign to make way for someone else."icon_wink.gif. The RFL lack power, but its difficult to imagine why the kind of successful businesspeople who own clubs would respect the RFL management enough to say "we need to hand more power to these people". True, you could put Warren Buffet in charge and they'd still have an issue handing over control ( it's human nature ), but at least put people in charge who can bring in money (or at least making raising money a compulsory part of the job, sackable on failure), and you'd have a better chance of giving the RFL at least the power to make some much needed changes.

We had someone who corralled a bunch of self-interested often self-destructive chairmen in to a coherent sport. One which grew exponentially, one which made profits regularly, one which presented a clear pathway and leadership, who got clubs to see the wood for the trees, who got them to plan for the future and invest in facilities and infrastructure and youth development instead of the short-term fillip provided by overseas journeymen.

He was castigated and insulted at every turn, he is now earning a hell of lot more at higher profile sport.

Indeed.

Thanks for your concern, btw. Will you be coming?


Really? Gosh! It is very good of you to point this out. Without your reminder, who knew?

Anyway I'm heartened that our temporary difficulty has pulled in at least one more well-meaning fan. I hope you enjoy the games.

I'm sorry...you lost me at "coherent" - who on earth are you talking about?

Sorry if this has been mentioned earlier in the thread but, what has caused the cash flow problem.
Are we talking about not enough bums on seats or monies from elsewhere which haven't been forthcoming or, is there some other problem ?

What a load of crap.

Lewis was immeasurably better than the current hierarchy.

Yes, it is pretty difficult to measure the difference between "totally inept" and "completely incompetent".

Correct, but I bet we're thinking about different people.

Defend your club all you like FA...it's very admirable, but The need for cash was not planned....someone, somewhere is telling porkies!


By the way, is the bridging finance coming from a high street bank or from your sponsors? I ask, because if it's the latter you're ed



200k would cost 364k over a year






Dick Turpin had the decency to wear a mask

Situation resolved.

[urlhttp://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/sport/10587678.Bradford_Bulls_owner_Omar_Khan_injects___900_000_to_pay_wages/[/url

Excellent news for all concerned.

He has shut a few up on here by putting that amount of money in.

Top bloke

Thats todays problem solved wait til tomorrow.

Indian take aways in Bradford dont make that much I wouldnt have thought!