Not really, that would make it a comparable situation to Pearson buying Hull of Hetherington and Co.

BBH have failed in their responsibilities as set out in their licence to Bradford Bulls RLFC, The RFL and the ESL A new company has come along and taken over the name of Bradford Bulls RLFC.

So, does the licence sit with the club or the owners?

I'm not saying that Bradford should necessarily be wanged out, but it does make a bit of a farce of the administration of the game.

In a nutshell.

If the licence is assigned to the club and any failures to departing owners, then a club is unlikely to ever fail and exists as franchise for as long as and as often as new people are willing to take over. In principle... if the system had principles.

Had quite a good Gordian Knot analogy lined up, but it has been ruined by my imagining Nigel Wood as Alexander the Great. All oiled up and that.

Yak.

I think he'd be more likely to use burger grease than oil.

No, kick them out!

It would look like a scene from the video to Frankie Goes to Hollywood, Relax!

Kick them out,if it had been one of the smaller clubs in s/l the rfl would not have been paying the players wages for 3 months ! We should be playing under the same rules,but are we.?

I wasn't suggesting it as an excuse for why they should stay in SL, just pointing out that the sports club is legally distinct from the company that owned and ran it. And OKB haven't just taken over the name - they bought the sports club in it's entirety. The history, honours, etc. belong to the sports club and not whichever company happens to own them.

Your point about who is the licence holder is a good one and central to the issue. Sadly I don't think anyone knows for sure. If you look at the criteria supposedly used to judge a licence application they contain things that refer to both the owning company and the sports club.

Right from the start the only outcome I've wanted from this has been for the Bulls to survive and licensing to retain some credibility. If that means dropping them to the Championship then so be it. The issue then would be who to replace them with, because it's far from obvious.

Indeed.
If BB stay in SL then licensing is done/over as it proves that a club can go bust dump all its debts and still keep its licence which kinda makes that same licence pointless.

I agree 100 percent why should any club do it and get away with it let them start again

This is true and reflects on the system as much as the clubs that might be considered as alternatives.
Asking them to be better or as good as a SL club [ibefore[/i being given the benefits of SL status is ludicrous. Anything approaching that, and I think we are, looks like a standard set to ensure they fail and allow us to retain a closed shop - at least until a less favoured SL club hits the rocks.

I can't come up with a 13-team system which is anything other than rubbish and they've voted for 14 anyway.

While, 'who could replace the Bulls?' is a difficult question, if the answer if 'nobody, keep them in' (and it looks increasingly likely it has to be), that leads to another difficult question - 'what can replace licensing now it has ceased to be credible?'

The one possible get-out is if Mr Khan agrees a deal with creditors. As he's on about putting £6 million into Odsal, there must be some potential for that. Now he might be waiting to check he isn't dumped into the Championship first (and I don't blame him if that is the case), but doing it first should clearly remove that threat and the RFL could/should state it explicitly, IMO. Gives the creditors a strong hand, admittedly, and we don't want it dragging on any more. If SL status is granted without and not dependent on a deal, then the carrott/stick disappears. The RFL can't impose a deal or amount to be repaid, obviously.

Even then, the credibility of licensing is severely damaged. After Crusaders it was already looking wobbly. Now we've had a glimpse of how far they are willing to go, even if they find a way to avoid doing it, they've shown their hand. IMO.

Even with the off field activity, the Bull's on field ability is not really in question (apart from the big blip against our bar-coded brothers). Their core set of fans is also larger than a team outside of SL. On that basis, they are deserve to stay because they are well supported and competative.

However, having breached the franchise agreement by calling in the administrators, it is up to the remaining clubs to vote. They have previously voted and given their unanimous support to the club last month. Therefore Bradford will be playing in SL next year.

The only real question is therefore the franchise system. But can the franchise system be judged on one club hiding the true facts of it's financial situation during the last round of bids (Bradford), a smaller club who was honest about their debts but granted a franchise (Wakefield) and a club that was always doomed to failure in SL (Celtic)?

If anything, the franchise system may need to be made even more stringent, or the tests amended to ensure true financial details are provided rather than abandon the whole system.

But even though I've stated all that, there must be a way to make it more viable for clubs outside SL to aspire to get into SL. I know how I felt before promotion, wondering if and when we would ever get into SL and that was before the franchise system.

Anyway, Bradford will stay in SL, but changes either to, or away from the franchise system will no doubt be applied.

Their support base goes hand in hand with the fact that they pay pittance for their passes.

Sounding like a Chinese meal might encourage some Chinese people to boost their crowds.

So that includes it's debts, I take it?

I think your memory over Wakey/Crusaders is a little cloudy as the only reason IMHO that Wakey kept their licence was because Crusaders went under.
Again IMHO if crusaders had stuck around then the Wakey admin would have seen them spin into the Championship.

Unless you meant this in which case my appologies.

The Bulls presence in SL makes a mockery of the whole Licencing process.
They have to go at the end of this year, no matter who they are.

P&R is coming back. Not sure if that will have an element of licensing or not tho.

P&R with a minimum stadium requirement (set realistically) would be a reasonable, simple and transparent option.
If they're scared of Leeds or Wigan going down during an injury-ravaged transitional year, or, more generously, they want to give the promoted team a chance to develop, it could be over a 3-year cycle.

Or any team that comes up has a minimum of 2 years before they can get relegated again.
I know that could well mean that the 2/3 from bottom side can go but that is the only way if they want to do it yearly.

I don't want to make it any harder than it is for the RFL to do the right thing, but I can't help but mentally drafting the press release...

'While licensing appeared to offer a sensible method for managing movement of clubs between our elite competition and the Championship, we found in practice that the wrong clubs kept going bust.'

Just a joke - there is no shame in admitting to an honest error.

Yes. I think something like that would be required, the gap between full and part time is to far to bridge, particulalry when you only have from October to February to sort it out.

Then they have to accept that Wigan or Saints or Leeds could go down. Might make them think about doing something to close the gap, I guess.

With a 3 year cycle you have to accept that a SL team could reach the play-offs (potentially even the grand final) and be relegated. Or a Championship team might go up never having finished better than 4th during the 3 years.

There's no perfect solution, every choice is a sacrifice.

The failure of licensing wasn't that it was imperfect, it was that it wouldn't admit it was. Eventually it was faced with a question it couldn't duck and its unacknowledged flaws were exposed.

It has been drawn to my attention that Wakefield was also a newco, albeit one that voluntarily chose to honour some of the oldco's debt. Thus, it'd be inconsistent to deny Bradford a SL place.

I stand by my criticisms of licensing - though if we did 'go pop', it would at least offer the consolation of fcimp's reaction to it costing us only 4 or 6 SL points.

That is one of the reason's they stayed in SL. If OK bulls decide to worm out of paying most of the debt then they should be dropped to the championship/1 to make it consistent. IMHO I think that they should go no matter what. This would stop any other club using Admin to get out of the overspending hole they've dug for themselves and would send a clear message to the rest of SL that the RFL will not tolerate anyone bringing the game into disrepute.

However we are talking about the RFL and we all know they don't have the balls to enforce anything.

The distinction is small, and really, in principle, non-existant. If Wakefield weren't chucked out for failing to reach agreement with creditors, it'd be unfair to treat Bradford differently.

The system needs changing before the RFL can start thinking about taking any sort of a stand. And it does need changing.