And reading Sadlers take on it he suggests that at best we've received a million of it. Not that anyone can find it.

So does anyone know how much rent we are paying this season on what should have been our own ground???

The people who seem to be suffering at the moment is the fans. Okay I'm not going to lose my job through it, may lose some sponsorship money but its not the end of the world but the possible loss of the Club will feel like the end of the world.

I dont really care what people do provided they do it with the best intentions of the Club in mind and more importantly they are open and truthful with it. I'm a big boy I can handle bad news provided I know why things are being done and there is some logic behind it.

Openness, truthful and honesty is what I want to see from whoever runs the Club. I appreciate that things have to confidentail such as players contracts but I think we just want to know what the hells going on without having to read it on one of these Forums first.

Slugger, looking at past accounts Belle Vue had to be sold. The overdraft at the bank and the long-term loan needed to be repaid and the only asset we had was the ground, against which the loans were secured. But I'm not sure about who did what to who and for how much, though.
The other point regarding why the two suitors did not go ahead with the moves to gain ownership of the club, bearing in mind they stated 'not at this point in time', I feel that they considered that they could get ownership at a later date for a cheaper price ie when the club is in 'administration' or just prior when creditors may accept less than owed.

Ask TED

BTW Why the hell has he not resigned today?

What do the other directors make of all this?

Something like that but you have missed the important bit, he never actually paid the club the full amount agreed. Infact he has left the club short by a considerable amount. He then allowed the club to continue to trade expecting future payments which were factored into the budget but never arrived. Hence we are in the ,lost our only financial asset and don't have a ground anymore

they must of known what was being done

Come on you should know by now that nothing bad that happens to Wakey is ted's fault (he has done everything in the best interests of the club) the fact its all gone tits up is the RFL's fault, Crusaders, the Wakey fans for not caring enough to put a grand a piece in to save the club (basically anybody but his).

I am starting to wonder how much of the 2.8m we actually received. We know he and Eccles had GBP 725k of it, but not how much actually went into the clubs coffers.

He will cling on to the bitter end. Why are we not putting the wheels in motion for administration now, its clear there is no other option.

If there are wrongdoings, then whatever form the insolvency takes the insolvency practitioner appointed - be it Administrator or Liquidator - is an officer of the Court. And ALWAYS has to ask creditors if they have any information that may assist him in assessing the conduct of the directors, in respect of which he has a statutory responsibility to enquire and if necessary act. The directors may seek to appoint a liquidator, but it is the creditors who decide who the liquidator is to be - provided they get off their s and act responsibly. The key is for the creditors to make sure THEIR man gets appointed, not some pal of the directors. Then a liquidation committee of creditors may be formed. The trouble is, a liquidator has sod all funds, so if the creditors want him to go after the directors then they have to fund it. To an extent, the same applies in Administration.

Sorry, that is quick and abbreviated - its a wide subject, and I doubt you'd want me to bore you any more with it.

And the way it could look to an unconnected third party MIGHT be:

1. Property speculator buys club because he sees development value in the ground.
2. Property speculator forms offshore vehicle to buy the ground off the club, at a fair "existing use" value and probably at some premium to that, recognising that at that stage there is no planning permission so the fair market value is hard to determine.
3. Offshore vehicle borrows most of necessary funding from Irish Bank, secured by mortgage on the ground
4. Offshore vehicle seemingly pays only part of the purchase price to the club. Unclear why not all.
5. Club then uses some of/most of/all of (unclear) the part-consideration to repay loans due to directors. (note that this would probably only be illegal if, at that point, the business was insolvent - then it would be a "fraudulent preference". But this transaction is surely bound to attract the interest of the Administrator or Liquidator.
6. Offshore vehicle obtains planning permission. Value of property now probably much higher than previously. How that value compares to what it paid the club...well that would be another area likely to interest the Administrator.
7. Property market goes belly-up, and short-term development options limited.
8. Club does not make the progress it hoped for in securing new ground, so is stuck in old dilapidated ground that offshore vehicle will of course spend no money on as such would be of no benefit to it.
9. Offshore vehicle stuck with paying interest on loan it took out to buy ground, rather than securing quick sale as it had envisaged. Offshore vehicle starts to get in the poo. (The administrator would likely be VERY interested in understanding what happened to the rest of the consideration, if it was not all paid, since if the offshore vehicle borrowed most of the value of the property and then did NOT pay it all over to the club, who DID it pay it to? Since this would prevent there being enough equity in the property to allow the interest to be rolled up.)
10. Remember it was an Irish bank? They who destroyed the Irish economy by reckless lending to poor credit risks? QED? And they will likely want their money back, or the mortgaged property sold at best value to at least get a half-decent recovery. And such a sale will have to be for development if that is the case.
11. Offshore vehicle goes bust.
12. Club owner goes bust. Unclear why, especially as he had his loan to the club repaid a while back.
13. Club, stuck between a rock and a hard place with no assets, soon to have no ground and seemingly owed a slug of money for sale of its ground from a company that has gone bust, and having seemingly had to use tax monies never its own to pay the bills, proceeds to go bust itself.

And, then again, it might not. The above is a view you might form from what is in that article and what you read on here and elsewhere. I do not know what REALLY happened.

But someone does.

And, I suggest, that someone should now be totally open and honest about what really happened.

Unless, of course, that would not be in their personal interest?

The best thing about all this, is I'm sure Ted's reasoning for hanging on to the club was he wanted to make sure somebody didn't just come in to get their hands on the ground!!! You couldn't make it up.

Did he?

You'll probably recall a few years ago (around the time the club was "sold"icon_wink.gif the rumours doing the rounds that Eric France and Sons wanted to buy the club. The general consensus then, amongst the vast majority of posters on here, I should add, was that this may not be such a good idea... because the one thing that everyone wanted at the time was the ownership of the stadium, i.e. the potential development land. Most people at the time were sure that with council backing, the Thornes Park stadium would go ahead, so for an outsider with, say, a million to spare, there was a big fat profit to be had from the sale of Belle Vue.

At the time, our chairman said that he wanted to make sure the ground was used for the benefit of the club, and said he wanted to put the ground in a trust. You [icould[/i argue (and I see you're very much the kind of floating voter who might be persuaded by this) that he bought the ground precisely to protect the club from the fate of being usurped for profit, even though he didn't have the money to do it himself, and thus went through this elaborate (to us) mechanism of the company in the IoM to conceal this actions. The club would pay rent to finance the interest on the loan to the Bank of Ireland, until such time as the ground could be sold and the loan repaid. The belief, as it existed at the time, that real estate would continue to soar in value, would protect the club from any loss incurred through the financing of the loan. With a stadium at Thornes Park, the club would have been debt free, with a million or more in the war chest, and a spanking new stadium to play out of.

My client has nothing further to add at this stage. Thank you.

That would be far too intelligent for Ted. The prosecution could just real off all his other disastorous decisions to prove that the above was nothing but an elaborate fabrication to try and avoid the fact he was a deceitful git

In my true Jim Carrey voice...

"Jordan fades back, swoosh, and THAT'S THE GAME! Nothing further, your honor! "

And is your client now prepared to give that testimony from the witness box rather than from the dock?

I don't really think he has much choice in the matter, do you?

Aren't Irish Banks currently suffering due to financial difficulties ?
Reading about Crusaders,not only did they owe WTW but a lighting company in Wakefield.It seems the administrator could take action against directors at that club.
[url=http://www.redpassion.co.uk/forums/crusaders-rugby/69930-list-crusaders-creditors-administrators-report-4.htmlLINK[/url

I sense another club statement being prepared for the website. How many of those have we seen over the last couple of years. It is something we are at the top of the league in.

Oh he always has a choice.

But if he elects to go in the box, he's under oath.

And may God have mercy on his soul.

And that's what bothers me. Are we looking at his actions with hindsight? Had the credit crunch not happened, would we have seen it as a cunning wheeze? It's too easy to see conspiracies when maybe he was acting in what he perceived to be the interests of the club.

Or what is the more sinister view and how does it work? You have to judge his actions with how the future looked back then.

I think you're pretty safe on the score. Go for it. Instead of donating the profits to squadbuilder, you could buy the club!

Finkabaardit....

Made interesting reading...looking forward to ours been made public too.

he gambled with what isn't all his

Would have loved to, but I went into administration after the losses of Issue 2 !!

**But I created a new company, lent myself a few quid, and rented the paper that I am going to do Issue 3 to myself at a larger inflated price**.

I iz clvr after all !

Exactly! That's the problem. We're in deep deep do-do, make no mistake... but we seem to need someone to blame. We've done the council and Boxy, we've done the RFL, if we can't pin it on this bugger, who are we going to blame? Ourselves? The shareholders who allowed this to happen by not asking the questions they should have asked? You can write a long list.

Then again, he may just be the rogue we have him down for...

I have to say I have no love for Ted but I don't think he is a Pearman I just think he was not very good at running a club. He tried something that didn't work. He should have been more open with everyone but I'm not sure how dishonest he is.
I realise of course I might be being too charitable and the result in the end is the same unfortunately.

Cas?