Thanks goodness for that.

Peace at last...

A friendly hello from a friendly Leigh fan here.

I don't pretend to know exactly what is going on at Bulls or even if it is a good or bad thing * I am way behind on developments * but as I was during your last troubles, I will be supportive of Bulls & hope that this is the catalyst of something good.

41 pages to catch up on, * how many was the last one * ? As I haven't been visiting RL Fans for several good reasons.
Ah well, good luck & see you next season for some ding dong battles on the pitch & banter off it.

To be fair pal we have no bleeding idea what is going on either!

I'm sure I speak for all Bulls fans when I say thank you for the kind words. Same goes for others on this thread "visiting" from other clubs who are sending well wishes. It is appreciated.

Now that our eggy friend is taking some time off, perhaps the thread could get back on track. Anyone got tickets for the fans forum and planning on asking any specific questions?

I wonder why our eggy friend is taking some time off.
Is it cos he has been revealed to be someone else???
Whatever reason, think we are all happy he’s done one

From previous history this is a standard thing from MG
Posts things that are speculative and criticism of current staff. Wheh he has a response he don't like or is outed he disappears.

Although I do believe Mick is involved in the Nestegg postings I doubt very much he is typing them by himself. I have listened to him for a few years (but refuse to now) and his low level English skills which are at times laughable with all of the totally wrong words he uses. I don't believe he writes these posts as he just isn't intellectually smart enough to write all of that by himself. I doubt he even understands the meaning of many of the words that are regularly used so as someone else stated there are different people using that account.
If he isn't involved then he really needs to let everyone know as if the attack on him is true and lots of Bulls fans start to get very angry with him then he may have many more problems in the future. If he isn't involved and the other posters are using his name to deflect attention from them then they are setting him up for real problems as there are always idiots out there looking for vengeance. It all needs to stop or it could actually end up with the police involved if links between the posts and attacks are shown.

It's time to call it a day with the nonsense.

So is there actually any truth in what they have been posting or is everyone just mad because it looks to be MG in one form or another? They just seem to have a bit too much information for it all to be nonsense.

Think a few people know someone connected with the club but only get a bit of the whole story. Even the main players such as AC or the CB consortium will only know their side of things. It is then a case of connecting the dots and going on past experiences with previous administrations. It is a bit like interpreting shapes in clouds.

Well considering he has already admitted to "spinning a yarn" to the parent of one of the players I think that speaks volumes.

Don't get me wrong I'm sure they're one or two facts in there. Whatever the situation is every Bulls fan knows we are in deep poop and they will be some pain to come. But don't believe nestegg someone in the know who is just letting everyone know the real truth.

Does anybody know who "threatened" Gledhill for telling the truth and reporting facts last week? He never did say.

Mick, who was it?

This is an open forum. Everyone is entitled to participate and have their own opinion. I dont think anybody has a problem with that and so anyone is open to post.

The problem is when we get posters who like to pretend they are in the know to, I assume, get some attention. They put out cryptic open ended posts then collect scraps of information already out in the public domain and then tie them back to pretend they knew all along. The same people who never reveal anything pre it going public and quote them not being able to.

Over the years (god it has been years hasn’t it!) we’ve seen this from lots of different posters (or maybe it’s the same person who knows..) and mostly it’s harmless if not very annoying. Most choose to ignore them and only believe official lines, some get swept up in the rumour, each to their own. The problem is when these people play with peoples lives. That is not fair. Lying to a player’s dad knowing what he and his family is going though to squeeze more information to boost your ego is embarrassing.

Anyway moving on. It’ll be interesting to see what comes out of the fans forum. The takeover must go through before then. I feel like it will be too late to save the majority of players this year making next year survival only. I want to support what we have left I really do but I’m not sure I can. Let’s see how it looks in February

If the takeover does go through, the only contracted players that can leave legally would be the ones who have cited breach of contract over the pensions issue. And even that's being disputed as to whether they can or not. It's not like the previous situations where administration / liquidation have rendered contracts null and void, a takeover means those contracts remain. I don't think there's even an argument to "do a Kopczak" if the current holding company are taken over, rather than people being TUPEd over to a new company.

Don't get me wrong, there'll still be heavy recruitment needed as the current roster isn't large, but they won't be starting from scratch in the same way of the last time.

I would think people are confident enough that the takeover will go through in the next 7 days, otherwise who in their right mind would call a fans forum at a club they don't even own yet? That would be the stuff of madness, and we never see any madness where this club is involved, do we? Oh wait.

Me too. I bought my season ticket, to help the club's cashflow. What a mug (albeit with the precaution of on a credit card).

Despite having paid, and been a loyal fan for more decades than I care to think, if the team ends up being destroyed and we are a new set of unknowns playing in Dewsbury at a low level, I won't be going. There is no point. You could spend another few years watching the house being rebuilt from the foundations up (although to think we could achieve what we have this reincarnation again is extremely optimistic, with no outside money and having already apparently spent all next year's funding), how could you be confident it was not just a matter of time before it all crashes down again?

And you would live through all that pain expecting that soon it will go bust all over again, or else be so starved of money that we become another lower-league club in perpetuity, a pathetic and rather malodorous remnant of what used to be a shining light in the game.

It's really depressing. Odsal killed off, and now all these disasters serially crawling out of the woodwork.

When Chalmers was appointed, I said that I couldn't see why he would get involved. there seemed no obvious reason for New Zealanders to do so. But he was handpicked by RFL and as the successful years have rolled by, you could be forgiven (if you ignored the state of the published accounts and the rumours) to think that in he and his team we finally had someone who knew what they were generally doing, even if not perfect and poor at communication. What is peoples' view of Chalmers know? Like everyone else, he isn't saying much, and the last straw for me is dismissing the pensions debacle as an "administrative error".

If the new wannabees think that having a fans forum when they don't own the club and haven't even been approved, is acceptable in a situation where the poor players apparently know feck-all, then they must be mad. If they were arranging anything it should have been a players' forum, to attempt to stop them all leaving and to try to repair some of the vast damage to morale.

I'm still hoping against hope, for something acceptable to be salvaged from the latest wreckage, but can't see it. As I have been saying for years, I heard a long time ago that the official plan was to kill off the Bulls altogether. So it came to pass. I thought that bringing us to liquidation may have been the end of that plan, but perhaps not. Forced out of Odsal, and incomprehensibly seemingly bust yet again, despite being in the care of the RFL's hand-picked placeman and under their watchful eye, it is hard to see how nobody knew which way this was going. Whatever the outcome, the whole situation is a f#ck!ng travesty, completely unacceptable, and I am unsure either the Bulls, or me as a fan, can recover from it.

Let's talk hypothetically, and not about the Bulls, as we (well I) don't know what has gone on, apart from the glib explanation of an "administrative error".

If it turned out that over the past couple of years, your employer was taking off you your pension contributions, but spending them instead of paying into the pension pot (plus breaking the law by not putting in the employer's contribution), then in the same way as if YOU had been stealing from your employer for 2 years would be grounds for summary dismissal, that must swing both ways.

So in the Bulls' case, it would depend on what the actual facts figures and reasons, if and when they emerge, but I can't see how anyone can "dispute" it unless that anyone can explain what actually happened. If it is true that it was an "administrative error" then that's great, they can simply move the money from wherever it was administratively misdirected, with fair interest, and all would (probably) be good.

I don't disagree with you. I simply say it's being disputed because noises from the club appear to be saying that. Without knowing the full details of what the impact is (i.e. the actual figures rather than the different ones various parties are quoting), it's difficult to say if the grounds are legit or not. But I certainly know which side of the argument I'd be putting my money on if someone forced me to place a bet, and it isn't on the side of it being an "admin error". But without the full facts, it's nothing but educated guesswork.

You are not a mug - just simply a fan who loves the club.
I suspect you will like me, be complaining and moaning as you drive to the first game at Dewsbury next year

I would imagine it just been a case of trying to buy some time to see if if could be salvaged. No club is going to announce those players signings until they know for certain it is deemed a clear breach and by appealing Bradford stopped a couple of clubs from announcing the signing of their players and making the situation look even worse than it does(if that is possible).

I know we are all talking about the takeover but if you sit back can you see any logic to it? Who would buy a club with no assets and renting a ground from someone else on the plus side and a massive pile of debts on the minus side? It looks more and more like another season with no team and a -12 start.

I agree, which is why I spoke hypothetically.

"Admin error" is hardly convincing but we don't actually know, and so it might be. The big question is, whatever it was, could they fix it? I.e. where was the money, if not in the pension pot? Hopefully in a different separate pot somewhere, so we should hear shortly that was the case and everyone's pension is back on track. Though we haven't heard it yet - but as against that - when did we ever hear anything? Not often.

I agree, and I think I made the same point on this (or another) thread

If it really was an 'Admin Error' then simply correct it, and everything is cool. If it wasn't, and the money isn't there anymore, then it's not an 'error', it's a word we've been cautioned not to say on here. But it starts with an 'F' and ends with 'raud'.

New article on T and A website with CB talking to Simon Parker if someone wants to put it on here.Nothing that ground breaking apart from a 2 year plan to become debt free and CB had been in talks since March with AC.

THE man hoping to buy the Bulls insists that the club will live within their means under his watch.

Chris Brereton is leading the consortium looking to take over from chairman Andrew Chalmers and rescue them from the latest financial turmoil.

The club are understood to owe more than £500,000 to creditors and are faced with losing players to help pay off the debts.

Brereton insists belts will be tightened if he takes charge as part of a four-point action plan similar to the one he implemented with Michael Carter at Wakefield in 2013 – with a view to getting the Bulls debt-free within a couple of years.

Speaking exclusively to the Telegraph & Argus, Brereton said: “It’s just like any business, it’s got to live within its means.

“Because there’s a ball involved, people like to forget about that but unfortunately PAYE and VAT don’t. It’s a business and can only spend money that it earns.

“If you’ve got difficulty in accepting that, then somebody else needs to step forward.

“I can’t attempt running a business that you know full well from day one you’re going to lose money. Our aim would be four-fold.

“We want to trade through the club’s present position and try and get it debt free within a couple of years.

“We’ll try to keep the club in the Championship or hopefully above and deliver to Bradford a rugby league club it can sustain.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and then being surprised and disappointed at the result. Somebody has got to break that cycle.

“When we went into Wakefield, I didn’t find a window or a till that was open. Tenners weren’t blowing out the window.

“We didn’t find a tap or a boiler that’s been left on. It was just spending too much money on players – that’s where it all goes.”

The potential buy-out still has to go before the RFL board for approval and Brereton confirmed that negotiations are on-going.

“We’re waiting for a couple of things from Andrew,” he added.

“I’m not so sure we’ll be able to get it over the line this week but maybe the middle of next week.”

That could coincide with the two fans forums set up for Tuesday and Wednesday at Dewsbury’s Tetley’s Stadium, where the Bulls will be based next year.

Brereton has no interest in the limelight if he takes over but feels it is important to address the concerns of the supporters.

He said: “So much negativity was out there and we felt we had to call them in and just give them one voice.

“This started for me in March when I offered to give assistance to Andrew. I absolutely did not go looking to be taking over another ailing rugby league club.

“But I do think it’s got some potential. I put on over 100 first-team events on at Belle Vue and we never got a crowd of over 7,500, and that includes the Million Pound Game against Bradford.

“Bradford have had two crowds in excess of that last season. Obviously, there was an unusual event of playing Leeds in the Challenge Cup but it does show that the support is there.

“They’ve just been beaten up a bit too much really.”

£500,000 worth of debt. Remember when people were saying the only reason for the special measures was the RFL doing it out of spite for moving out of Odsal? I think that's been proven well and truly wrong now eh?
The RFL may have a lot to answer for over the start of Chalmers' journey, but it sounds like stopping the club spending even more money on players when they weren't paying their bills was doing the right thing.

The club's published accounts showed debts of some £790k, with net liabilities of £580k, on Jan 31st 2018. Can't see how those figures will have improved significantly in the 20 months since then.