The withheld SKY money is going to the other Superleague clubs.

I'm aware of that - I imagine it was the only way that the SL Chairmen could be persuaded to vote for the RFL's increasingly crackpot handling of the situation.

It doesn't have any impact on how I perceive the situation.

They didn't loan us SKY money two years in advance. Even if the RFL paid wages for 3 months of the season.. Baring in mind when Mr Khan bought us that would be nowhere near that amount of money. Unsure where you've got that from.

Of course not. Bradford Council still have the freehold of Odsal anyway and believe me many of Bradford's fans wernt happy with how everything was dealt with. I'm trying to point out that `RFL help` isnt always a good thing. It made finding a buyer more difficult and has left the new owner at a disadvantage.

Yes we have a new owner & everythings good but IMO If our previous chair admitted the problems initially with Odsal's leasehold intact the club/new owner would be in a better position now.

Yeah it would have been so much better without all that pesky RFL help!!!
I've never heard such disingenuous crap!!

Just for a minute I thought i'd pressed the Bulls forum by mistake !
There are 2 or 3 issues which still remain puzzling regarding the Bulls admin and re-forming

1, Why were the players not sold, whien it is usually the administrators duty to raise as much cash as possible to pay of the creditors, either in part or in full.

2, What exactly is the situation concerning advence monies and withheld monies from Sky and why would a sponsor be allowed to withhold any cash.

3, Finally, for the Bulls fans who actually think their club has been hard done by. Even with the RFL taking on the lease and this causing a subsequent problem with their security with the bank, there is no way in this world that the Bulls would have survived without the substantial help from the RFL and with this in mind, surely the RFL should be doing everything possible to ensure the survival of Salford along with any other club that falls into difficulty !

I meant if the RFL do what they did with Bradford and buy the lease to Salfords stadium... pay the wages for the rest of the season in advanced sky money and allow any debts to build up it may prove harder for Salford to find a buyer because a new owner would then need to pump more money into the club in the long run.

The above would be unlikely because we arent mid season anyway. Each situation is different.

The RFL helping Bradford was the only way for us to survive at the time but what im saying is in my opinion the old board should have made everyone aware of Bradfords debts sooner and then we wouldnt have been in the position where the RFL had to / wanted to buy the lease at Odsal and where SKY money had to be advanced because this has made things harder for our new owner.

I think the old board at Bradford delayed and delayed until we ended up in a mess.

I do think the RFL is partly to blame for every club that has got into financial difficulty since the licenses have been awarded. For the finances at Bradford not to have been noted when licenses were granted is unlikely. Very few clubs have broken even over the last few years & that needs to be looked at. Unfortunately the game is being run on quick sand at the moment and there's many clubs going through financial difficulties.

I know other forums suggest the SKY money from Bradford may have been put to better use going into some kind of `emergency fund` for clubs that are struggling. I hope that Salford get through the problem they have and that the fans there pull together and try and raise money ( but ensure it's safe and doesnt get swallowed up ) I know i will pledge to help them. I wouldnt want any club to get into that position.

If they hadn't been propped up with half a million quid of donations, they might have gone sooner.

For the record the RFL did not "Buy" the lease for Odsal, they took it in part payment for a £1.25m loan that still didn't manage to keep the club afloat (£700k of that loan related to outstanding monies from a previous loan which is effectively what the RFL valued the lease at) they then advanced the Bulls a further £550k to help them last them through closed season Dec 2011-Jan 2012, the £500k raised by fans cleared the directors liabilities and went nowhere to pay of any of the other debts, so all the Bulls fans did was help the numpties that put them in the mess. Without a shadow of doubt players should have been sold and the administrator was not independent and was clearly having his strings pulled, a 6 point deductions was more than fair as the club did not deserve their league position, as they were fielding a team they could not afford, which is what was causing the debt to increase weak in weak out

There is some coffee on the stove, may I suggest you wake up and smell it

In short bulls got help from rfl and other resources and so should salford.

I agree.. but maybe in a different way. Something should be set up to help clubs going into financial difficulties because its happening too often.

Yes i know, but when asked to help your club or they'll go bust it's hard not to. In hindsight maybe it would have been better for the money to go into the kitty for a possible new owner.

I think when a club's in financial difficulty it's hard not to help regardless of how you see the situation. Just like i will with Salford.

Perhaps if the Bulls withheld Sky money had been ring fenced for something more useful than the other clubs lining their own pockets the RFL could offer more support to Salford. Apparently all clubs have been informed that the RFL is unable to advance SL payments in 2013.

Would have made more sense wouldn't it? I don't see the harm advancing money already due in the short term personally. Aslong as it's only done for a short time whilst for example a new buyer is preparing to take over.

But most wakey fans knew what was going to happen and posted on here at the time, guess bulls fans were blinkered

Oh apologies, the Bulls fans and the whole of the RL press must have missed the prediction of an EGM to oust the current board which effectively ended any possible investment after the pledge.

What that pledge DID do was bring together the whole club, from fans to players to coaches and officials. Personally I'm proud of how the whole club pulled together and we saw some of best rugby played in a long time. If we'd all sat back and said 'stuff the club, it's the directors problem' then none of last season would have happened.

Omar Khan bought the club because he saw that the Bradford community cared about the Bulls. Would he have been quite so keen to take us on without seeing such efforts from the fans? I doubt it.

The Wakefield fans need to move on, despite their disappointment that the whole club wasn't dismantled and players sold off for peanuts.

It's a good job they didn't have that attitude when the Bulls first went to them with the begging bowl; if I recall correctly, the Odsal lease situation was precipitated by the RFL having loaned the Bulls a massive chunk of cash, of which they failed to pay back a penny piece? As financialtimes has explained, the RFL took action to resolve that situation and the dominoes began to topple.

Personally, I don't think that the governing body should be required to prop up failing businesses; they should however properly audit the finances of each club when they carry out the licensing process, to ensure that they're not handing a 3 year licence to a club that is built on sand.

As for moaning about what was done with the 'withheld' cash - I hardly think the Bulls are in a position to complain about that, given the lengths that the RFL and to varying degrees, the other SL Chairmen went to to keep them afloat.

That's unfair and more than a little bitter; I don't think anyone wanted the Bulls to fail - rather, people were calling for parity in terms of how clubs are treated when in difficulty. I guess WTW fans had a more robust view than most, given that the season before the Bulls fiasco, our own club had been in a similar pickle and was pretty much hung out to dry.

Perhaps unfair on some but there was some degree of revelling in our plight and a fair percentage came from this direction. I'm sure it wasn't the case from all Wakefield supporters but it was still evident.

I dont think that people were revelling in your plight at all.
Many of the comments on here were made due to the perceived preferential treatment thet the Bulls received, some of which was only found out after the brown stuff hit the fan. ie the loan that was given 2 seasons ago and then the utter nonesense of "iconic stadium", which many thought was the RFL trying to hoodwink the sport, which as we now know was a smokescreen for other issues.
No sportsfan wishes to see the game in such turmoil and we have certainly endured enough to last a lifetime but, neither do we want to be fed information with such a slant that you fall over whilst trying to glean the facts.
In hindsight, a little more honesty and transparency from all parties would have helped both your plight and your standing within the game.

As I recall it there was a lot of support and advice given, perhaps there was some imbitterment but that was when it became clear 1) our advice wasn't taken in the spirit it was given, and 2) when it became clear your club was being treat very differently to how we were in similar circumstances!!

I don't think there was any revelling; you're mistaking the anger that many people felt at the obvious preferential treatment the Bulls received for a desire to see you go under.

I don't think that anger is assuaged by the fact that many of your supporters are now crying foul about the 'withheld' monies - that seems a bit rich, given the help you received from the whole RL community. I'm sure for example that Messrs O'Connor and Hetherington would be gratified to see Bulls fans calling for the modest additional allocaion of central funds that SL clubs have received to be held back for 'better uses', given the significant financial assistance they both provided when the club was on the brink of collapse.

If I were a Bulls fan, I'd keep my head down and my gob shut.

I think some Bulls fans are miffed that not only did we receive the 6 points deduction but also received this 'new' penalty of losing half our Sky money for the next 2 years. Perhaps Wakefield should feel a little less hard done by now as well?

Perhaps that 1.2 Million might have been better spent plugging the funding gap from Sport England that will cost many development officers their jobs in the next year?

But the new owners are getting on with it and have just secured the largest sponsorship in SL history (take note RFL as we begin SL with no major sponsor on board) to help plug the shortfall. Omar Khan and his team have some ambitious plans for the club, I just hope he manages to deliver them.

This shortfall/financial penalty could have been plugged if you had saved the £500k and put it into the newco as advised by us that bothered to take the time to try and explain.
As I understand it the financial penalty does not exist in the laws, and the reason the money has gone back to the other SL clubs as it was originally taken from this pot in the first place.
The SL clubs chairmen gave the ok to the RFL to use next years money on the proviso tgat what was taken out, was taken back out of the bulls pot and redistributed back to the other clubs.
I don't know if a similar deal has been offered to Salford, it certainly wasn't to us (some resentment yes, although we were a bad bet for the RFL at the time, but so were you and so are Salford.
Anyway what's done is done, we all still have clubs to support, you'll have to just take your medicine for a couple of years, hopefully having to operate on less money will make you a better run business.

The only problem with that scenario is that we were only advanced 2 or 3 months wages (less than 200k a time). This was basically covered by the remaining sky payments due upto the end of 2012 plus maybe 100k or so from next year. Certainly nowhere near the 1.2m being held back. The only 1.2m to come from RFL is the purchase price of odsal, But Iirc the RFL purchased odsal not SLE so doesn't make sense money being distributed to ther SL clubs if this some sort of buy back deal for the lease. That said new owners are planning a roof on pop side next year and can't see them spending major money on a stadium they only hold the sublease on.