Are moving to Dewsbury for 2 years while a new stadium is built in Bradford. End of an era at Odsal

Dewsbury is such a lovely place. After all it produced the Burgess brothers.

This has terminal disaster written all over it. What happens if the new stadium doesn’t get built?

Yep. Sadly has the signs of another club owner with a bigger ego than bank balance.

Chalmers seems intent on sticking it to the Council/RFL rather than actually sorting the issue.

If I were the RFL I’d sell the lease back to the Council and so allow them to sell the land, presumably for housing.

It costs the Bulls £300k a year just to keep Odsal running. For a midtable Championship side, that's a lot of money. Especially as the central funding is being reduced next year so that SL clubs can have a bigger slice of the pie.

If you were renting a house and on top of the rent you had to pay for repairs and upkeep of the place while your landlord sat back and expected you to keep paying, you'd tell them to stuff it too.

Good luck to them. Odsal is a great location for away fans. But development wise its a hole that would suck vast sums of money to bring up to a modern day standard.

Sad to say there's obviously no figure like Trevor Foster around to resolve the mess that the Bulls have become. Not only is this a tragedy for the city of Bradford but a real threat to the prosperity of the game. We're walking away from the second largest city in the "heartland" for short term political ends.

it is?

I think the original quote about location was that it was only a very short distance from a motorway junction and easy to get to.

I don't think they were referring to the supporter experience of being at Odsal, which lets face it, was only ok if the weather was reasonable.

I think it's a smart move in many ways. Bulls at Odsal is death by a thousand cuts - something needs to change in terms of their home and if this focusses minds so be it.

Spoken like someone who has absolutely no idea of the costs involved in playing out of that stadium. Do you work for Bradford council?

We stay there on the current terms and the club dies (again). It's that simple. Is playing out of Dewsbury ideal? Of course not, but the club have just freed up literally hundreds of thousands of pounds by doing this. Odsal stadium has been a millstone around the neck of the Bulls for years, and now it's gone.

Like the idea of building a brand new stadium within a 2 year time-frame. Good luck with that.

Such a shame, but inevitable I suppose.

I'm sure everyone has a memory of great occasion at Odsal.

Great dressing up by Chalmers though, I've never heard the Tetley Stadium described as boutique!

i still have nightmares whenever i heard wooly bully, it takes me back to many 50 point batterings.

I certainly have, I went with me mate from school(Ings Road) and his dad to the 1960 play off final against Wigan, only highlight of the day was when entering the turn-style I looked down and found a half a crown piece, I did ask everybody if they'd lost one

What’s the issue with the RFL selling the lease and the land being used for housing then?

If Bradford can’t afford to stay there that’s fine. They just shouldn’t expect other people to fund their stadium/redevelopment for them which has been the tone of Chalmers press statements for a while now.

The only thing odsal has going is its size. Some great memories but unless someone with mega millions came in it would never be developed into a decent modern stadium.

If it's costing £300k per annum, plus "wear & tear" to continue playing at Odsal, it's easy to understand Braford's position in wanting something cheaper.
The difficulty comes in finding any decent alternatives.
Moving in with Dewsbury seems ok in the short term but, getting a new facility up and running in 2 years, especially on the back of walking away from their current lease, which will give both the RFL and the local council some headaches, is likely to be very problematic.

The deal for the RFL to take over the "iconic" Odsal stadium is going to leave a further hole in their finances and they are already, financially, blowing their brains out.

A bad day all round, although one does suspect that, this is still being discussed and there will be a different end to the story.

Well part of me did wonder (and I'm not being snide here) that this COULD be carter-esque brinkmanship. Sometimes it's a productive tactic in focusing minds. That said, this looks more firm than any of the Wakefield wranglings to date.

Well, for your sakes and those of the wider game, I hope it is more of a threat than reality.
Although, £300k per annum etc, is a huge rent on the Odsal facility and seems a long way from the supposed "peppercorn" rent that the old Braford Bulls were allegedly paying to play there.
It would be interesting to know whether Bradford can just walk away from their obligations at Odsal as there must be some fairly stringent agreement in place to cover such a situation or, at least you would expect so

Not exactly sure what happens now (if this all goes through) in terms of the leasehold (held by the RFL) and the freehold (held by the council). I guess the RFL and Bradford council would come to some agreement for the leasehold ownership to go back to the council who would then presumably try and sell the site off - although I've seen talk on here that building on the Odsal site isn't as straightforward as it appears.

In terms of Bradford's expectations in terms of help with the stadium, you could point to any number of RL teams currently playing out of stadiums and facilities built for them either wholly or in part by their respective councils. Bradford council stopped giving a stuff about Odsal, the Bulls and professional RL in the city as soon as they signed the deal with the Bulls back in the early 2000s.

I was under the impression there is a load of unpleasant, toxic stuff below the surface, & I don't mean the R.F.L.'s involvement in the whole sorry tale.

The head lease between the RFL and BMDC is at a peppercorn rate. The sublease between the Bulls and the RFL is supposedly £72k pa -this is effectively them paying back the loan given to the last but one but one(?) incarnation of the club. The big costs are maintenance, which the new owners should really have known if they had performed the required due diligence before setting up shop there. A few years of consolidation as a PT club should really have been the way to go rather than signing up a squad of 35 with 22 FT players and going for instant success.

Be interesting to see if the RFL give any special treatment when it comes to scheduling of fixtures being that there will be 2 teams in the same league ground sharing.

Probably should post as I don't think anyone else has the RFL's response to Chalmers' announcement
[i"Bradford’s request to use the Tetley’s Stadium in Dewsbury as a home ground remains subject to the approval of the RFL Board, who are charged with making a decision in the best interests of the sport. We have not received an application, and it would be inappropriate to comment until we do."[/i