John Bateman is on the last episode of James Graham's podcast. It's a really interesting listen and he talks about his life and playing career.

There is one really interesting bit when he discusses the first admin and the Omar Khan ownership.

He says that around the time that he was on about £12000 and Elliot Whitehead was on about £20000+. He says that he doesn't understand how Omar Khan was cleared to buy the club and immediately after doing so he offered both Bateman and Whitehead contracts on over £100K making them the highest paid players at the club. Their agent then rang both of them shortly after that to tell them that the club had agreed to sell them both to Wigan and Catalans respectively. Khan signed them on to new contracts to increase their value with the intention of selling them all along. He actively hawked them round the league to the highest bidder. I know what happened to the Wigan transfer fee for Bateman but what happened to the Catalans transfer fee for Whitehead?

Anyway it's a good listen, hes a good lad who still loves the club & city and his family still go to matches at Odsal.

Not so happy days. Khan was basically screwed by a majority of the SL clubs when they voted to withhold the SKY money and share it amongst themselves. He should've chosen to walk away at that point but he didn't, I guess generating some income via transfer fees was a way of making up the shortfall. It was all doomed from the start.

Khan was screwed over by the rest of Superleague but let’s not forget he was using the central funding to buy the club. He wasn’t suitable for the job and the administrator’s report on his tenure makes bad reading. I won’t say anything to get me into trouble but I doubt the transfers were originally intended to cover a shortfall.

If the RFL had their checks and balances in place he wouldn’t have been anywhere near the club.

You could say the same about the two blokes that came after him.

You absolutely can yes