I think in these times of cutting our cloth we should make some changes...
1. if you are a fan of another club and commenting on our ownership, or troubles -a £1 donation to post should be made. general comments and team/player comments free.

2. if there is a mention of living within your means or cutting cloth then the fee is £1 per mention. (if this becomes repetitive from same poster I.e. 3 or more posts advising us the bradford fans how we should act, support or RUN the club an additional fine of £5).

We will be richest club in the land.... or be saved from the repetition and very kind offers of help.

Not sure how we can go fully part time if it is a continuation of the same company. We can't just cancel contracts and if players can't get equivalent deals elsewhere they would surely be within their rights to insist their deal was honoured?

If their wage stayed the same, but their hours were cut, I'm sure they'd be ok with that. There just won't be any new FT players coming in

I've not a problem donating, done it before and would do it again no problems but could you also add for those that post stupid comments of what we going to do if a rich owner doesn't come a long that they are given a good sharp poke in the eye

That bugged me a bit over the last 2 months. It became obvious that leaving Odsal was the single biggest cloth cutting we could do, but few fans of other clubs could acknowledge it

It also seems either glaringly obviously or remarkably convenient that the total debt quoted is equal to the annual expenditure on staying at Odsal.
The 3 largest creditors keep being mentioned - whilst it would be interesting to know who they are and how much they are owed, the nature of the other debts may be more revealing.

Apologies now for the long post, but might be of interest to some.

In terms of “cutting our cloth accordingly” there are far too many elephants in the room to us on the outside to understand where any cost cutting can be made.

• We are led to believe that opening and maintaining Odsal for RL cost the club circa £500k per year. Clearly moving away from the money pit makes good sense, and believe it or not, if that is true, Andrew Chalmers may actually have saved the club from administration (although it does not seem like the case at this time).
• Moving to Dewsbury will cost us £2k per game – when you consider the options of staying at Odsal, makes clear sense. What it does not tell us however, is the lost value of advertising, match day hospitality revenue, likely attendance drop etc, so the £2k cost will in “real” terms, be considerably higher.
• Where will our junior and reserve teams play? Again, what costs will be additional to this now we have “moved out”.
• Should we run an academy and reserve side next year? In order to receive funding towards the academy from the RFL, I believe we also have to run a reserve team. Does the receipt of funding, and what is now the annual sale of upcoming talent to SL or more wealthy sides, cover the cost of running such an outfit. At first guess I’d say almost certainly not. It would however be a very unpopular decision to see the scraping of our junior set up that has helped produce recent talents in the current GB Lions squad of Jake Trueman, John Bateman, Elliott Whitehead, Tom Burgess (and the rest unavailable or not selected). Unless the academy is self-sufficient, how can it be a justifiable expense at this time? It’s horrible to say, as I worked in previous years on the BullBuilder board, and they have done many fantastic things for the club, but without seeing the numbers first hand, I don’t see how the existence of the academy can continue in its current guise.
• Do we need to move to a 100% part-time playing staff? Clearly this would be a cheaper option than operating any sort of hybrid squad we currently use. Any full-time contracted players would need to agree to any change in terms, or accept some form of pay-off for the remainder of their contracts – again, an added expense to the list.
• Cash is king. Companies can make shed loads of losses and operate absolutely without problem provided they have the cash available to pay wages and suppliers. Clearly we are not cash rich as we once were in our hayday.
• Managing our existing creditors is key at this present moment in time. All it needs is a few of them to play ball and go through legal proceedings and any takeover will hit the floor pretty quickly. It is interesting to read that Chris Brereton has already started to speak with our main creditors to try and gain agreement on payment.
• How on earth are we supposed to manage payments to staff, players and suppliers needed in the coming weeks? Rumours of advance payments from the RFL of next years funding have surfaced, but we probably don’t have the cash to pay them going forwards in the long term if we are already looking at setting up deals with existing creditors, unless there is a mass influx of cash from season ticket sales, which will be very difficult to believe being high given the massive uncertainty hanging over the club.
• The clubs existing credit rating is horrendous (Well, that of Bradford Bulls 2017 Limited). From one credit agency, you are advised to offer zero credit, our rating is 0D (Poor), and High Risk. 3 CCJ’s remain unsatisfied (2 from June, 1 from late September), all for not what you would call significant amounts of money (6k, 1k & 2k). There may be legitimate reasons for not paying these I would add.
• The next accounts are due to be filed at Companies House (y/e 31/01/19) by the end of this month. A little more information may be there, but as the club publish unaudited abridged accounts, there’s not too much to play with and interrogate. What the last accounts (Y/E 31/01/1icon_cool.gif did show however, was that Creditors: amounts falling due after one year were a value of £675k. Without further detail it is impossible to understand what makes up this balance – it will most likely be loans to individuals / organisations – possibly the RFL, who knows…….. Also, when those amounts are actually payable (or have been paid) is unclear…
• The last accounts showed Creditors : amounts falling due within one year to be £115k. If this has now risen to £500k it may be a shift from Creditors greater than 1 year to current, as per the point above
• Issues with Pensions payments have been declared as an “administrative error”, I’m hoping that is the case, and it’s not a case of robbing Peter, to pay Paul……(see above 2 points)

So in summary, from the outside in we are clearly in a mess financially, and I suspect there’ll be a few more skeletons coming out of the cupboard if previous administrations are anything to go by….

Spot on Bully. There is to a large extent no meaningful comparison between the two businesses in regard to the incoming income streams.

Not sure if you listened to the Full Eighty Minutes last week but I said a large chunk of the debt will be addressed by selling our young players (Rowan Milnes, Matty Storton) and those more established (Joe Keyes).

I still stand by the term I used which was asset-stripping but what else can CB, KH and MS do? Chalmers has left a car crash behind and it's either sell these assets to repay the creditors or administration number five.

Just a word of warning. Don't be fooled like I was by the club's accounts. Andrew Chalmers self audited them and nothing that has been submitted can be trusted as fact.

This is one of the most multifacetedly stupid comments I’ve seen for a long while!

Debt, particularly toxic debt, is not the same as a loan!

The LOAN puts an asset in Wakefield’s possession that is in fact worth more than the £3million.

The loan repayments are less than the annual rent for the ground thus improving Wakefield’s financial position

Owning the ground allows Wakefield to develop income streams within the new developments

Holding title to such an asset makes Wakefield more creditworthy

There are many more positives to taking that loan but these are the immediately apparent financial ones.

Of course there is, the philosophy is exactly the same even if the scale is much smaller!

While the funding is smaller so too are the outgoings.

You seem to know a whole heap of what other clubs owe to who!

Stones and glass houses come t mind when you support a club that paraded a massive cheque around before redevelopment of the east stand that never came to fruition. Then also while a non league team of a different sport always up to date with rent etc and you lot got locked out for the opposite!

Seems some fax fans cant have reasoned discussion without spouting your club owes etc! We all know we are in the poop. On the other hand Greg Florimo comes on and posts with reason

Mick, who are KH and MS?

Kathryn Harrison and Mark Sawyer, you'll get to meet them next week at the fans forum.

I must stress again that Mark's position in the new ownership of the club is purely an advisory role to help and assist with the 12-month move to Dewsbury.

Kath Hetherington and Marwan Soukash

Thanks Mick

Who is Kathryn Harrison, and what's her pedigree in the sport, if any?

Also, are those three the totality of 'the consortium', or are there others?

It will show as debt (loans are debts however you paint them) on the accounts and the Council could call the full amount in at anytime. Indeed there is a leaked document stating that that is what must be done if Wakefield fail to keep up with repayments, particularly as the asset was only valued at £1.8m a few months previous to the loan been made. Had WT been relegated that loan would have been a massive millstone around their necks.

I know we have some OTT fans at Fax but in our defence, I don't believe Mr Dog is a Fax fan.

Why are you discussing Wakefield’s finances on the Bradford forum. This Bradford thread is difficult enough to follow without adding Wakefield’s financial history to it.
Thank you

I'm glad you let me know all that, particularly about the Council can call in the full amount at anytime. I mean, you're completely wrong, but thanks for letting me know!

Can we keep this thread to somewhere near its title please.

I appreciate that all threads suffer from a little 'mission creep' but other club's finances are nothing at all to do with the Bulls, so less about that would keep us all a bit happier. Anyway, the Bulls figures are enough to give me a headache.

sorry- just wanted to put poster straight. good luck with everything else

Cheers mate, I think we'll need all the luck we can get!

Of course I know what living your means relates to. The point I was making was that without a rich backer we as supporters are a key factor in generating funds and in desperate times we might be needed to support. Rightl CB is going to run the business tightly but if the picture being rumoured is correct then we need all income streams generating as much as possible just to get a competitive team out on the park. If we don’t it’s relegation or worse and this is assuming we get to Feb 2020. As we seem to have been left in the mire we have limited options