I really don't understand peoples insistence that this mess is all the fault of the fans for buying cheap season tickets?



When you go into Topshop to buy a new dress in the sales, do you pay the price on the ticket or do you pay more? I bought my season ticket at the price that it was offered at. The people running the club at the time assured the fans that the club was financially sound and that the scheme was a new marketing initiative. How exactly are the fans to blame for buying into it?

Pah, pin money where I inhabit.

The Bulls may have 10,000 fans but they don't benefit other clubs to that extent. The away following is probably 1500-2000, that is what is of benefit to other clubs in the league. If the Bulls were replaced in Super league by another club, fax, Fev or leigh how many fans would they take to away matches.....500.?? 1000..?? that is what benefit clubs have to the league as a whole........



Home fans only contribute to their home club, it is away fans that contribute to the league as a whole

reducing the league may not be the answer, if teams have less home games that in effect means less money into the club, would the increased Sky money cover it....maybe for a club with average home gates of up to 7500k but clubs with gates in excess of 10,000 would have less income with reduced teams and home games......

You are mistaken, I do not and never have blamed fans for the current situation, in fact without the extreme generosity and commitment of the fans the situation would have been considerably worse. I think the fans of the bulls are superb and was one of those fans o would do and say exactly what you are.



No, I blame the board of the bulls for getting into the mire, but I also blame the RFL's licencing process, a process that is supposed to protect against this sort of thing. And it gauls me that the rfl told Halifax that their finances were SPECULATIVE. How on earth they missed the speculative finances of the nulls bid beats me.



As I have said we all know that the mini licence applicatio process is just a sham being run by the RFL to make appear to run a

fair process and the bulls will be on Superleague next season.

I don't accept that. If you figure in internationals, finals etc where the individual club is not represented then the club with the larger support will sell comparatively more tickets than the club with the lesser support. In terms of cup/play off matches where the individual clubs are represented and where income goes to the RFL there is no doubt that thr club with the larger support will contribute more.



Then add in the larger demographic purchasing Sky and thereby being reached by sponsors and it's clear that the clubs with larger fanbases contribute proportionately more than those with smaller fan bases.

If we want to expand the game & sponsorship are money & media people going to be interested in yet another small M62 town/village, as cruel as that might be?

So what your actually saying is that Fax, Fev or Leighs only chance of superleague is if one of the other small M62 clubs, like Castleford drops out?

I would see little merit in replacing one small M62 town with another.

It's a good job the NRL don't have such a myopic view of the "little Sydney suburbs" that make up most of their league.



I know it's just my opinion and people can disagree. But my belief is that any professional sport in the UK should set a pyramid structure of leagues with at least one up-one down automatic promotion/relegation between them.



A bit like Soccer.



I personally would live with the long term results in RL even if all the teams in the top league were eventually from 'M62 towns'. Who knows, if such a system were established, a financial backer might decide to set up a club in virgin territory in the knowledge that, with recruitment of players good enough to win the league two years running, his/her new Club would be able to achieve Super League status within two seasons via Championship 1 and Championship. They would know that they would stay in Super League if they didn't ever finish bottom - and not have the risk of it all been taken away from them by a committee operating some sort of 'licensing system.'



Personally, I would just prefer the integrity of such a system of automatic promotion and relegation to committees deciding who plays where. Once Paris went and Dublin, Barcelona etc failed to materialise, there should have been a realisation that central planning doesn't work.

Not necessarily. What is perhaps more the case is that Super League cannot afford a Cas to drop out because even a weak Cas outfit is in a different 'league' to those clubs. Cas has a base of support, youth development, sponsorship that the Super league needs to keep. The issue is the gap between the two leagues is almost unbridgeable without a massive injection of funding.



Were you to ask Steve O'Connor how much it costs to go from the Championship to the Super League with the genuine prospect of ever being competetive I suspect it would be £5-£8 million over a five year period from him alone. Hence throwing one club out and letting another in is a collossal gamble.

Give some champ clubs many years at the top and they will build a fan base too. Give teams nothing to play for and watch them die fanbase wise.

Last time I checked Wakefield didn't bin off their old company and their historic debts and start a NewCo................unlike Bradford have done by all accounts.

So not the same at all.

The very NRL that doesn't have:

They had many years & failed dismally, hence they are in the position they are now.

Is that so. Look back at your history books.



You won't find OK Bulls in there though.

You don't half talk some tosh.



The most successful rugby league in the world is the NRL and you don't even get that it does not have P & R. Indeed it is astonishing that anybody would genuinely believe that the winning team from the Aus stiffs league could be promoted and take a place in the NRL.



Your other theory about potential investors begs the question as to why, in the century before SL, new clubs with such investors had not sprung up all over the land. Whereas [isince[/i the advent of SL, [isome[/i clubs [ihave[/iattracted deep-pocket investors.



(You could also consider one of the most successful leagues in any sport, with certainly some of, if not THE, biggest investors, the NFL. How much P & R does that have, remind me?)



You finally also have no clue about company law. OK Bulls Ltd is a new company. Bradford Bulls was and is a business, which runs a rugby league team. That business used to be owned by one company, now it is owned by another company. I entirely get that you hate that idea, but the actual (and legal) fact is that the business of Bradford Bulls continues uninterrupted. The administrator successfully sold it as a going concern. Irritating things, simple facts, aren't they?

I have a feeling that that explanation would be a very useful sticky for at the top of the forum for all our new resident posters who are enjoying our troubles. Or maybe that should be part of a new site banner?

Funnily enough, I've just written an analogy on the same topic in another thread as some people really seem to have a hard time understanding the difference.

So do you!



The Bulls went bust. Full stop.



The Newco with the funny name bought the business and assets (but not the liabilities mind) of the Bulls from the Administrator. But not as a going concern



...only COMPANIES can be bought as going concerns.



The NewCo has effectively ditched the £1.5m debts the Bulls owed - the biggest element of which was owed to you, me and all other taxpayers as it was due to HM Revenue and Customs - not to mention the effect on all the small traders in the Bradford area who are struggling financially and have now been stitched up in this way .



Some Bradford fans can't seem to accept that they've had £1.5m worth of entertainment on the pitch that you weren't entitled to (as your Club couldn't afford the expensive players it had).

They didn't. Comma.



Bradford Bulls Holdings Ltd went bust, and to prove it to you, it will shortly be going into liquidation. Colon.



It has a number of assets. One of which was the business of Bradford Bulls. That was sold to OK Bulls Ltd. Semi colon.





Funny that. I was pretty sure that Bradford Bulls played their game on Saturday as normal. maybe my memory is playing tricks. Maybe the concern in fact ceased to "go", and it was all just a mirage. Question mark.





Utter, total, unmitigated nonsense. Full stop.



I suggest you look up what a company is before allowing yourself to make an even bigger tit of yourself, as you seem to have not the first clue. Exclamation mark.





It hasn't ditched anything. The debts were, and are, owed by BBHL. Ampersand.

Can I just point out that in your, otherwise excellent, response you should have started the third sentence in paragraph four with a cpital Lettre?

You won't find BBH there either. Nor any of the other companies that own RL clubs.



What was your point exactly?

Hmmmm. I hope that wasn't normal from now on.

Actually, I agree with FA. You talk out of your back passage. Although it sounds more like diarrhoea than talk to me.







No. Bradford Bulls (Holdings) Ltd went bust.













So what were we watching on Saturday then? No, the "going concern" of any business activity can be sold. And very very regularly IS. As happened in this case. The alternative is to sell the assets piecemeal, and last time I looked I did not see one man walking off with the Coral Stand and a different man walking off with the goalposts. Now, FA is a lawyer with many many decades (

) of experience. I am an accountant with, likewise, more decades of experience than I care to remember. I'd suggest if you want to take us both on you had better be VERY sure of your facts, sunshine?







Not having a good day, are you?



Firstly, the reported debts are not £1,5m. If you want to quote sloppy T&A reporting then do it on your own time. (The value in the Statement of Affairs is £1,328,864 - the T&A reporter clearly did not understand what share capital is. And I can see around £100k of the creditors that crystalised only on insolvency.)



Secondly, the NewCo has "ditched" NOTHING. It has no responsibility whatsoever for any of the existing creditors, and indeed did not even exist until last Thursday. And the NewCo is not in any way connected (as far as we are aware) with the former business, its directors or shareholders so we are not talking about a phoenix that rises under the same management like we see all too often, especially in pre-packs.



The debts remain with Bradford Bulls (Holdings) Ltd, and will be dealt with by the liquidator in due course.



Who has been "stitched up"? Had OK Bulls not come in, or a similar entity, the alternative was liquidation and piecemeal asset realisations. A worse, not better, outcome for the creditors. If you are going to make such libelous and outrageous statements, I suggest you explain very clearly just how you have reached your conclusion - and how you propose to back it up.



If the creditors and the taxpayer have indeed been "stitched up" that will have been because of the collective responsibility of the directors (in various configurations - remember the board that appointed administrators was not the same board that had been running the business while it got into the mess, but no-one forced them to oust the previous lot) and most especially the shareholders, whose actions and/or lack of actions are the real root cause of all this IMO. So how about you go spill your bile on THEM? Albeit you will be a long way back in the line. Seeking to pin any blame on Mr Khan is at best indicative of a total lack of understanding of the insolvency process and legislative background, and at worst dishonest trolling of the worst kind.







Where do you get £1.5m from? (See above).



Did you say the same about Wakey when they went bust (twice)? I recall their two-man catering supplier losing £19k the previous time time that club fell over. Or the £1/2m that London defaulted on to the taxman when THEY fell over? Or Widnes or Hull KR or any of the other clubs that have done likewise in recent times. Or is it just because it is Bradford? Hmm?



It rather seems that by the time the baord realised that 2012 income was going to fall well shoert of expectations, it was far too late to reduce the player spending - contracts were signed and in place. With other clubs up to salary cap or full quota, just how exactly was the club expected to cut its costs overnight? And there is sod all else anywhere that material savings could be made -the issue was not one of excessive costs, more of insufficient income. In the middle of the worst recession since the 1930s, in a city that has suffered more than most, and without the wealthy owner of most of our peers to underwrite the shortfall, I just wonder what the likes of you would have done?



And incidentally, the 2010 accounts showed a loss of around £300k. 2010 being the depths of the recession, you may recall? The general prognosis at the time was for a gradual pick up in the economy, so I suspect that that loss was not seen as any reason to panic at the time. Things clearly got a lot worse pretty quickly - it was only a very few seasons ago that we were remarking that Bulls were one of only two SL clubs to be reporting a profit.



I am on record as being violently opposed to a phoenix business under the same or similar ownership using insolvency as a way of clearing the decks and starting again with an unfair advantage. In any industry or field. This is not a phoenix though. It is actually a rescue to save a long-established business, and a considerable number of jobs, in precisely the manner envisaged by the Enterprise Act 2002 and the insolvency legislation and environment generally.



Creditors getting hammered is unfortunately part and parcel of business life - there are plenty far far bigger businesses that have contributed to that. It is not fair, but then neither is a lot else. And it is the repsonsibility of those who were running the show at the time. So, as I said earlier, I suggest you go and take your anger out on them. And not on anyone else who is blameless in the whole affair.



And if you insist on continuing to make yourself look such a total prat, do it someplace else on your own time, there's a good chap?