That's because that is a truism, the vast majority of clubs can't be favourites and 2 or 3 are favourites, leaving 75-80% of clubs not being favourites (the big majority)

I wan't to see the governing body of the sport I love act with impartiality, integrity and consistency. I want them to do this in the interest of fairness and because I want my faith in the sport, which has been diminished by events over the last few years, to be restored.

I pity you that you judge people by such a low standard that your default is to accuse them of being so shallow, I wonder what sort of person you must be in the real world.

Be right back, going into administration as don't have enough money.

Be right back, not cutting cloth accordingly regarding the squad.

The bulls need to be held accountable.

They know that as long as their on field performance is in order, their off field dogs dinner is of little consequence as the RFL will find a way to make it work.

Bradford making a mess of thigns by virtue of on field performance would be the one thing the RFL couldn't squirm out of.

Hence no cloth cutting.

Wakefield fans should be screaming bloody murder.

Regardless now of the outcome of this entire saga the ''bulls brand'' has done untold damage to it's own reputation as an entity as well as that of the wider game. It's unlikely they will ever fully recover, and frankly, the sooner they a brushed under the carpet, the better.

are really expecting me to have sympathy for a company which could survive without reneging on its debts, surviving and not reneging on its debts? Im not sure why you think Wakefield have done a good thing here, they have done exactly what they are supposed to do, they tried to survive and have done so. Are you saying that Wakefield should have been allowed to go in to admin to avoid debts they could pay and that they deserve praise for not doing something which is essentially fraud?

Are you really accusing the Chairman of Wakefield Trinity of telling lies at the club meeting a few months ago.
There were several hundred people in the room that evening and it was clearly stated by MC that if Wakefield had gone into admin, that they would not be allowed to play in SL.
There wasn't any detail given about, if they pay this bill or that bill, it was a black and white statement.
So, please repeat the fact on here for all to see, that YOU believe he was not telling the truth.

You are questioning something that you clearly know nothing about but, please enlighten us further, it should be very interesting.

And if you speak to different fans of different clubs they will tell you other clubs are the favourites and theirs are hard done by.

that will never happen because you dont want accept your failure as your failure, you can only relate it to other clubs. You need to have the safety net of a conspiracy because the alternative, the truth just isnt acceptable to you. Its sad but not all that important

Individual club loyalty has nothing to do with it.

The RFL have bent over backwards for the bulls, unjustly.

In similiar circumstances their response to wakefield, essentially amounted to ''sort it out yourself or rot in hell''.

Let's not forgot wakefield are also an ''iconic'' rugby league club with a rich history. Just because bradford won a few titles in the last 2 decades.

The FRL can not govern this sport properly.

No im accusing him of phrasing things in a way which shows him and his club in the best light to his fans. Which is kind of what I would expect every Chairman of every club does every time.

I think it would be naïve to think that Michael Carter had a conversation with the RFL that consisted solely of one question and one unequivocal answer, if you think about it I don’t even think you would believe the conversation went ‘what happens if we go in to admin’ ‘you start again at C1’ and that’s it, done dusted, no further information sought or given.

No, I think he is saying that clubs who do what you term as "essentially fraud" should receive the sanction they are supposed to receive.

It doesn't matter how you dress it up, the company in charge of the Bulls owed Omar Khan a lot of money in perfectly legal loans. Now they don't. I wonder what term Omar Khan would use. But hey, by avoiding that debt, they don't have to decimate the playing squad and all on the pitch will be rosy and the RFL hang onto a sacred cow, or bull, or whatever.

I have loved rugby league all my life. Never followed a football team. It's only ever been about rugby league. Right now, I am struggling to love it.

So you are saying that the Bulls arent paying debts they had the money to pay and that they have debts they could have paid but had no intention of paying? We are moving on to some pretty serious allegations here.

Way to go changing the point again, it's a good tactic but only works if the person your in conversation with doesn't keep track and spot what you're doing.

My post was in response to you saying that the RFL statement could have had different meanings dependent upon your interpretation. I neither want, expect or need sympathy from anyone regards Wakefield Trinity's self made plight.

Zzzzzzzz

When your argument flounders, raise the libel flag. Given that the legal person you are accusing me of making accusations about, the company that used to run the Bulls, no longer exists, I guess I could pretty much say what I like.

In any event, all teams can repay debts. It's how they choose to do it that's the issue. For example, Bulls could have off-loaded all of their players, reduced their playing bill to nil, and then recruited academy players and Championship players who would play for next to nothing, which is what Wakefield pretty much did in 2011.

Wakefield couldn't pay their debts as things stood. They reduced their playing bill and other liabilities, as it was the only way to do so and stay in Super League. Did the same thing apply to the Bulls?

PS: I've been a lawyer for twenty years. I can handle myself. You need to stop frothing and concentrate; you're letting a queue build up in the drive-thru lane.

You're over-analysing this to justify making deliberately provocative statements like this one.

I haven't seen any Wakefield fans refusing to accept our own club's failure; that is well documented and there have been harsh consequences - our squad and non-playing staff have been decimated in a series of austerity measures worthy of George Osborne. There were few, if any, declarations of unfairness or chips on shoulder throughout that process - rather, a weary acceptance that if it gets the club back on a sound financial footing, so be it.

I really don't understand how anyone can deem it unreasonable for fans of one club to expect that rival clubs have the rules of the competition applied to them in equal measure, regardless of shenanigans about ownership and such. The fact that we're about to embark on a season that heralds the return of P&R is just grist to the mill in that regard; not only are Bradford potentially being handed an unfair advantage for the 2014 season, but it could have a profound and lasting effect for many seasons to come.

If you remove the need to categorise and polarise people, it's simple common sense; with everything that's at stake, the governing body need to apply the rules consistently and fairly, regardless of which club is involved.

Im not changing the topic at all. You said that Wakefield took drastic action to avoid Admin because the RFL told them they would need to start in C1. The inference from that being that had the RFL not told Wakefield they would have needed to start in C1 they wouldn’t have taken such action and simply gone in to Admin, avoiding debts we now know for certain they could pay.

As far as I am aware the RFL have not yet made a decision on the penalty that will be impossed on Bradford. So there are some hefty assumptions going on that they will get off scott free.

I've yet to see any rule stating administration will result in relegation. I'm not going to go into who has said what to whom as quite frankly very few of us where there.

There is a rule about not paying debts to HMRC, but this is treated seperately to administration. It has it's own little area in the rule book and there is no numbered sanction on it.

So it's entirely possible that both case are correct.

Wakey could have been going into Admin due to debts, but that may have included debts to the HMRC and they may very well have been told if you can't pay the HMRC you will have to start at the bottom again.

Bradford have been through an Admin process but have said they are working with creditors, which ( I don't know) could include the HMRC.

In terms of administration the situations are the same, but in terms of the extra blurb in the regulations one gets caught by the HMRC the other does not.

We will never know unless someone asks the RFL what exactly has happened in each case. But given that regulations cover a multitude of offenses, you can't say they are both the same if they are not.

Does anyone on here actually know the full in's and out's of both Wakefields and Bradfords Situations. Can they say that they have sat down with both situations and found they both cover the same set of rules?

Whilst the internet is awash with rumours and facts, separating out those two to decided whether they are both the same situation is imposible.

Whether a reporter will have the nouce to ask the RFL such a detailed question I doubt, as they tend to ask very general questions about the state of the game when they do get to interview someone at the RFL.

That isn’t necessarily true at all, its far too over-simplified. You seem to forget that the last few months a huge sales months from a RL clubs point of view, its when they sell a majority of their merchandise over Christmas, its when they sell season tickets etc etc. It is very possible that cutting as you describe would have meant Bradford sold next to no season tickets, next to no merchandise and lost far more in revenue than they saved in cutting costs. The idea that when you need more money to just blindly take the gardening shears to your outgoings is idiotic.

Tell me, did the drastic action Wakefield take including turning down 6 figure offers for players like Danny Kirmond?

If you had been a lawyer for 20 years im pretty confident you would know that whilst the company that ran the bulls is in liquidation, the people who ran them are still alive and still capable of being libelled.

You do realise, with all your lawyerly knowledge, that Omar Kahn still owned the company put in to administration yes? So on top of Bradford Bulls now deciding to simply go in to admin to avoid debts they could pay, we know have a more interesting accusation, Omar Kahn has fraudulently conned Omar Kahn out of lots and lots of money

HMRC LIABILITIES
A3:1 ....


It may be considered Misconduct to have HMRC liabilities, to fail to submit certification, to
submit incorrect certification or to Under Report to HMRC and such Misconduct may also
be considered to be a matter which impacts on the integrity of competition....



This is the section that could have been used IF Wakefield where to go into administration. There is no description of any penalty in the whole section. IF Bradford have agreed to pay off the HMRC debts, then again they would not fall foul of this particular rule.

The section about administrations I've not been able to find, I'm assuming it's in Appendicies E but they are not there when I last looked,.

There isnt an identical situation to compare it to, it doesnt exist, its a complex and unique situation which required a complex and unique solution. Trying to shoehorn resolutions in to vague terms isnt fairness. If we were being fair we would examine the situation on its own merits rather than desperately trying to find broadbrush strokes to draw false comparisons. The only reason that this is happening is certain fans of certain clubs see it as an opportunity for their club to gain an advantage on the field. Thats it.

Liabilities exceed income and assets. You can either increase income or strip liabilities. Players are not assets unless you can get a price for them. We did it by predominantly reduce liabilities, albeit there were some prices paid for some players.

Did the Bulls do everything to reduce their liabilities? Given that the playing squad is a fair reflection of what was on the park last year, with useful additions, like George, Carvell and Gaskell, it seems that reducing liabilities didn't go as far as possible. They could have, for example, chosen to not take on any more liabilities.

So it's never as simple as "debts they could afford to pay". It's whether you are prepared to be left with whatever you have got once the debts are paid. With the Bulls, "what you have left" seemed to include Omar Khan, and that was maybe the problem. So ask Omar Khan what his view of the administration is.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

It was Omar Kahns company that went into administration, my guess is Omar Kahn isn’t too happy with that, But the only person with any responsibility for that and the only person who could have avoided that is Omar Kahn.

Again you ignore the possibility that reducing liabilities can also reduce income. It isn’t as simple as either increase income or reduce liabilities as you state, its increase income in relation to liabilities.

What kind of accusation is that? What on earth are you accusing him of? This is getting serious.

Sorry. Just thought I'd see how effective it felt as a tool of argument. Fairly unsatisfactory, as it turned out.

Im accusing him of being the owner of OK Bulls ltd. Though thats less an accusation more a matter of public record. Unlike others i havent felt the need to start throwing out baseless accusations.