You are quite correct but I am attempting the ostrich approach as I don't want to face the truth.

If you are right there then there's no point going on any more. We may as well be put out of our misery now - it may be a blessing.

well one simple question is as follows
does the 500k include the alleged 350k SRW loaned us
if not then our debt is 850k for a start

Reading on here it is clear that those with any sense who can afford to take up the share offer, are not going to until the club comes totally clean about everything and answers the many valid questions raised and yet unanswered.

The synic in me is starting to think that the lack of detail in writing around this whole share offer is due to the fact that there is more to it then meets the eye. Having seen many half-truths emerge from the club over the years, the only way I would consider buying any is if the following was all provided in writing :

(1) Assurance that the current BOD would not have anything to do with the club going forward

(2) Assurance that the money is going into an Escrow account, all we have at the moment is verbal confirmation and being asked to make cheques payable to a firm of accountants that I don't know from Adam

(3) Assurance that none of the funds will be used to repay Directors loans

(4) Assurance that none of the Directors will be able to profit if and when the remaining proceeds from the sale of Belle Vue are realised

(5) Full disclosure on the true debts the club have (including who they are owed to and what period they relate to)

(6) Details of any money that has been taken out of the club over the last 5 years by Ted & Co

(7) Details of what amount the BOD are to be donating to the cause (a total figure will suffice) and confirmation that they will not be taking any shares (or at least donating them along with the other shares they already hold)

Sadly, I doubt anyone at the club is capable of/willing to provide these answers.

Consequently, I think we need to get fully behind the supporters trust and let Sandal Cat know what amounts we are willing to pledge, then we can hopefully have enough to look to buy the club back if it goes into admin. I prefer the Supporters Trust route anyway, because at the moment I believe the share request with a minimum of a grand leaves some of our fans on the outside looking in, and thats not right, everyone should be able to contribute what they want are able to. Plus I am far more willing to trust my fellow supporters than anything that the current BOD are responsible for putting together

Would be the right thing to do and come clean, it won't happen on a few points you have and i think we all know that.

Some of the questions could be covered at the meeting but i doubt the Trust can cover/give all the answers needed at this stage, some you'll never get answers to i'm afraid, still at least it offers some hope and we clearly need some of that.

who gets the rest of the ground money if we move, now does his lordship.

it is everybodys choice but do not leave ted with anything left of this club, if we are so much on our knees,why 50%. we would be better in administration then hed got nothing and he wouldnt get a golden handshake. its not our duty to save our club but its a chance to get rid of this lot, who dont even have the decency to say sorry for their actions of running the club into the ground. he will not walk away and sometime in the future it will come back and bite you. DONT DO IT for the long term good of the club.

I didn't know Ted wanted anything more from the club. He's pretty much said he'll hand it over, lock, stock and barrel, if people can come up with the money. No golden handshake, no nothing. Just a barage of abuse for overseeing the whole screw-up.

Tricky well said, what a sick joke this whole situation is. There are so many unanswered questions and nonsense statement being forward to the supporters - no sensible person will put the cash into the proposal.

Goodbye Richardson family and all your cohorts, do the decent thing and leave voluntarily, if this is your last throw of the dice it's a poor one and all you are showing is your contempt for the intelligence of the supporters.

When I read this I leapt to another conclusion, and it is only a guess. SRW may be setting up for the administration period. If the share thing doesn't work then the club may go into administration, with the money SRW gave being a loan rather than a donation this means he'll be one of the major debtors who get to vote on the terms of the administration. This potentially could be what he's doing, essentially buying a %age of the votes at the later stage.

oh, and hello by the way... I'm a cas supporter but wanted to keep up with all the goings on a Trin - and registered because when I read that about Rodney Walker it made me think of the goings on at Leeds United a few years back.

this is what angered me and then to read on a club statement how much do you want your club to survive

Here's an odd proposition for you... (sorry by the way, the Rodney Walker thing is fresh in my mind and I'm trying to get my head around possible scenarios)

Rodney Walker donates 165000 to Wakefield to pay the tax bill, upon the share thing being announced it gets turned into a loan - If 500000 is raised to own 50% of the club, then this effectively values the club at 1 million. Rodney Walker does not then take the cash out of the club but instead converts that loan into shares and at no further cost to himself he gets 16.5% of the company.

I'll stop now

Maybe there could be options explored on the 18th regarding a fighting fund?

Here's a thought.

If we accept the reality that the RFL are not going to give us a franchise, we will be a National League side next year. In which case, wouldn't £500K be much better put behind a National League team. It would go a lot further, might help us win something (which we have to do to get back into the top flight again), by which time hopefully Newmarket will be sorted and the future will look brighter.

So is the solution to go into administration, drop down, get a fighting fund for down there and so do more with it?

Perhaps someone with knowledge of company law can provide some info though, because my understanding of the Crusaders situation is that they went into administration, which of itself doesn't cleanse the debts, I think. All it does, I think, is ring-fence the assets as the administrator tries to come to agreements with creditors to sort out the debts. The Crusaders company then went bust (which is different to administration), and the new Crusaders company was set up in its place. In our case, would administration work, ie, the HMRC is not going to go away, and so we would have to do what the Crusaders did, and go bust and restart as a new limited company. But the principal asset related to our club, Belle Vue, is owned by someone else, with a payment pending on that, and so how would that work? The new club would not be allowed to say "give the money to us instead", I assume, as the money would be payable to the old company, not the new one.

What I'm trying to get round to is what would happen to Belle Vue? Would the buyer get it by default and we would have to come to a rental arrangement, and did the Crusaders avoid the tax and old debts not by going into administration, but by going bust?

It's my opinion that we should continue to fight for our super league status to the very last second, we fought really hard to win promotion into this division and even then we have to kick the door down to obtain access. Once in, we had to operate without super league funding for a period of time and have then battled against the odds to retain our place.

There are no guarantees!
If we drop a division and then over the next three years we win grand finals, get the new stadium built, create a solid financial foundation and tick all the other boxes we may still be denied a super league franchise in 2015 because of the geographical location of the club.

It's my suspicion that this is what was said to the potential investor who walked away after his meeting with the Rugby football league.

=#0000BF[size=150Faith Hope and Trinity[/size

In the absence of all the relevant details, which have quite reasonably been requested by a number of the club's supporters on this forum, it might help to try and summarise what we do know and what we can confirm as fact.

The shareholding offer, whilst publicised by the club will not be controlled by the club and neither will the money

Investments/donations will be paid into an ESCROW account which is secure from access by anyone from the club, the board of directors etc

Andrew Wright & Co, while acting as the club's solicitors are not under the employ of the club or the board of directors. They are a long-established firm of accountants whose impartiality in this matter can be relied upon

Any money paid into the ESCROW account will be refundable to each and every investor until such a time as the new shareholders decide how best to use the funds for the benefit of the club. That decision could be a number of things but the most likely are:

* Pay the club's immediate debt to HMRC
* Leave the money in the ESCROW account until further clarity is established
* Refund the money to each individual investor if that is what they wish
* In the event of the club entering Administration the funds could be used to purchase the club from the Administrator
* Use the money as a fighting fund to help rebuild the club along with any new investor

The vitally important thing to remember is that it is you/us/the supporters who will decide what happens with the money

What is clear is that if no such fund exists we as supporters will have no choices to make, no influence to bear and we will have to sit by and watch OUR club be torn apart

Ted has indicated publicly that, in the event that the £500,000 is raised, he will transfer his shares probably to the Supporters Trust

Finally!
please do not see this as a mechanism to bail out the current board of directors
Change at the top is now an inevitability, either through a positive outcome of the shareholding or because of Administration!
[size=150=#FF0000Do you want to have a say![/size

I think the options are more limited than that. There are two options available:
1. Monies raised are used to pay off HMRC.
2. It isn't and we go bust.

In relation to option 2, that is when the other choices kick in;ie, do people want their money back or is it used as a fighting fund for the new company.

In relation to the first option, and this is where the lack of information is frustrating, the worry is that we save the club on 31st January but then get another big bill on 31st July, we have no money to pay it, and we go bust. No 500k fighting fund for the new company.

before we go to the supporters trust meeting on the 18th we hope to fill some of the information gaps and get some assurances about the club's position going forward

Thats my view on this, i can see the other side of the coin but we should fight for what we have earned, you have my full support Clan.

if ted walks away and transfers his shares,ive been told that he would stll be entitled to the rest of the ground money,leaving us in a state like crystal palace were under ron noads and mark goldberg

are we as fans allowed to speak with the rfl and ask them what is going on. you cant play against a stacked deck

what are the fans ambitions. mine is to play in the top flight but not at the expence of the club, if we cant generate enough income to compete then what is the point in carrying on like this.

is there enough money to pay the players and staff at the end of the month.

Without answers to the many questions being asked we are going in totally blind. No point putting any money in until we know exactly what we are dealing with.

i agree jt no one wants to answer any and imo this is just the tip of the ice berg.

While I work in corporate finance, I'm not an insolvency practitioner but will try to clarify things a bit to the best of my understanding.

You're correct in saying that in the event that WTRLFC Limited went into Administration, the assets will be fall under the control of the Administrator who will try to raise as much cash as possible from them while trying to sell the business as a going concern.

BV was an asset of WTRLFC Ltd before being sold to Cala Homes, and there is now an amount sitting on the company balance sheet as a debtor to WTRLFC Ltd that form part of the assets. The Administrator would look to realise as much of the outstanding money as possible, but as Cala would be paying this ahead of the contracted date they may be able to negotiate a lower amount (which would be a benefit to them).

I'm not sure how the £350k we were expecting from Yorkcourt would be treated as technically it doesn't become due (and therefore an asset to WTRLFC Ltd) until planning permission is granted.

The Administrator will also contact all creditors of WTRLFC Ltd asking them to provide confirmation of any monies due to them.

Once the Administrator has been able to establish how much can be raised from the assets to pay the liabilities, they will call a meeting of the creditors who will be told how much of their debt will be repaid. If this is accepted by the creditors a CVA will be drawn up to formalise the proposals. The order of priority for repayment of debts is i) secured creditors (i.e. the Bank) ii) unsecured creditors (e.g. HMRC, suppliers, wages, season ticket holders) & iii) the shareholders. The shareholders are unlikely to see any money unless the secured & unsecured crediors are repaid in full.

If the Administrator is able to find someone willing to buy the business as a going concern, this would normally be done through a Newco (e.g. WTRLFC 2011 Ltd). It's often the case that the CVA would also include payments over a period from Newco as the assets of the business that went into Administration is not enough to cover the liabilities. In WT's case, this MAY not be required if enough money can be realised from Cala Homes to clear the outstanding liabilities.

I know that you may now be wondering why the club doesn't negotiate with Cala now - the simple answer is that Cala probably don't have to pay us any more money until we have left BV and they have a contract to that effect. They already own the site & it's in their best interest to wait as late as possible before paying us any more money.

I would expect that anyoone buying the business from the Administrator would also be able to negotiate a certain amount of cash to be included in the deal as they will almost certainly need to honour the value of the season tickets that have been sold.

If funds do end up being passed back to the shareholders by the Administrators (and this would be split equally dependant on individual shareholdings) it is then up to them individually what they wish to do with that money. I suspect that many minority shareholders would be happy to see this money being passed to the new business running the club as we are fans, but given that Ted has entered an IVA he may well have to use any money that comes his way in respect of those debts.

At the moment, it seems to me that we will follow one of two paths. Either, £500k will be raised before the end of the month which will see the existing BoD stand down (albeit that some may wish to stand for re-election), Ted will transfer his (whole???) shareholding to some form of trust (which I would expect would be controlled by those who raised the £500k), we continue through the 2011 season with a chance of retaining our SL franchise for 2012-15 and we get the full benefit of future money paid by Cala Homes.

OR we can't raise £500k, the club enters administration in early February, a Newco takes over the running of the club (hopefully) who won't benefit from future money due from Cala Homes (as it will have been paid at a lower amount to help clear the liabilities upon entering Administration) and we play through the coming season knowing that we will not be in SL next year.

some may wish to stand for re election, have you lot gone completly mad.