Indeed. But if they do get to keep the poisoned chalice, would be good to kick em in the nuts some more, just for good measure

Oh, I expect there will be any number of folk lining up to do just that...[ipour encourager les autres...[/i

I'm certainly not in that camp - just genuinely interested in the mechanism of what's gone on, and indeed is still going on.

Indeed, I'm sure you are not.

You can come again!

I suspect the majority who WILL be in that camp will be very very much closer to home

I think the issue is that although the reasoning for cutting Ok out and not playing ball with him is understandable it does mean that Bradford haven't cleared 100% of the debt.
This leaves the RFL in a tricky situation with little wriggle room as previously that has involved a point deduction.
My guess is 2-4 points off.

If only OK is left unpaid, then the creditors have been paid as far as I am concerned.

Had OK put his money in as share capital, exactly the same result but it would not be a creditor in legal form. The substance is that it is investment by the owner, and no way on this planet should it rank pari passu with other creditors.

And, in a very short while, no way WOULD it anyway. In order to be able to prepare the company's first accounts on a going concern basis, he would have had to subordinate his loan behind the claims of other creditors anyway.

There is no way on this planet that, just because he chose to put money in as a loan not as shares, the outcome for him and the consequences for the Bulls should be any different. Owner puts money in company cannot pay him back, tough luck you lost.

When it's your decision to make, then the above statement will have relevance, but for now, the decision lies elsewhere.

And just who the fekk are you to tell me whether my expressed opinion has relevance to the discussion?

Coming from someone who routinely contributes so very little to so many threads, that is rich indeed.

Careful, or else he'll hoick his latin phrasebook at ya in a fit of pretentiousness!

I suppose on planet "Coulda , Woulda , Shoulda" you would be spot on. Is your analysis, ceteris paribus (see what I did there), applicable on planet earth?

Exactly how far up your own are you?


A differing opinion to yours seems to bring out the worst in you. You are an apologist for the farcical behaviour of Bradford bulls and you revert to type when anyone dares comment about the farcical going ons at odsal........sorry, iconic odsal!
Your opinion that OK's debt can be somehow "ignored" is ridiculous.......but you probably know that as you don't strike me as being as thick as you are currently coming across

Like it or not but there is an outstanding loan on OK Bulls as a company.
You are not paying it off (understandable) so technically you have not paid 100% of the creditors.
Those are the facts of the situation.

Like I said it leaves the RFL very little wriggle room.
2-4 points off I would imagine.

Nowhere near as far as you are consistently up yours.



Er...you did not express an opinion. In fact, you regularly don't. Like in the above case, where you told me my opinion had no relevance. Just stand back and think about what you were asserting? That YOUR opinion has relevance, but others' do not. You do that very frequently. As I said, who the fekk are you to tell me my opinion has no relevance?

And you frequently resort to insults and derision, like you did just there. You accuse people who disagree with you or object to your attitude of precisely what YOU do. The sad thing is that you really do not seem to realise it.

And as for the point about OK's debt, leaving aside you know fekk all about what has really been going on, if you of all people don't get substance over legal form, then there really is little hope for you.

Substance over legal form - something the RFL can avail itself of - would suggest otherwise, though, I will argue. You seem to be arguing for a points deduction based purely on a legal technicality of how OK chose to put money into the company. I am arguing that the decision should be based on the substance of the matter. But it will anyway all be academic if the new owners - whoever they turn out to be - do not agree to settle with all the other creditors, since a points deduction then would be unavaoidable. So the issue may never even arise.

Really? I seem to be able to admit when I am wrong and accept that I don't always have the answers to the questions and problems faced by the game.
Jeez....I wish I were as infallible as you Adeybull



I repeat......your assertion that "in your opinion OK's debt shouldn't count" is flawed and makes you as marginalised as can possibly be. David Hughes will be owed about 14 million by the end of this year.......if he wanted it back, then he would have to chase hard because he'd be lucky to see a penny of it, but that doesn't make that 14 million any less of a debt. OK is owed money......just because Bradford Bulls 2026 (forgive me, I lose track of who actually owns the club at the moment) Limited was set up to try and wriggle out of paying it, the debt still exists.


I said nothing about your opinion.....let's recap shall we?

I simply said the decision wasn't yours to make.....you can read into that what you will.


Ah......I believe it was you who first resorted to insults and derision in this exchange.
Let's recap again shall we?


Yep.....I'd suggest if you don't want to be called a megalomaniacal who can never accept that the club he follows has done wrong, then I'd suggest you lay off the insults and derision.....





....posters like you "who know, but can't tell us because they'd have to kill us afterwards" are ten a penny on here and as much use as a chocolate teaspoon!

Fact is that the new new new new new owners (or is that new new new wannabee owners) of Bradford have tried to pull a fast one and wriggle out of a debt.....a debt by the way, that was incurred to keep Bradford afloat and which without, the club would have vanished.

6, 4 or 2 points or no points at all, the reality is that a great many RL fans in the UK no longer care and that you really have used up every bit of good will the club ever had.


Anyone for a bucket collection? It's for a good cause (again)

Far from ridiculous, his opinion is essentially correct, so far as the RFL is concerned, as they told the current owners not to pay on the basis that they were unhappy at OK having a loan account.

The RFL can be as happy, or displeased as they like. If OK "loaned" the Bradford Bulls money and there is paperwork to back up his claim, then the loan exists. As unfortunate as that may be for the "new" owners of the Bulls, whomever they may be, I would imagine that OK is not the kind of guy to simply hand over cash without a paper trail.

I suspect the RFL wish they had never got involved with Iconic Bradford now.....it would have been better to let the club fend for itself, because this whole sorry saga is making a mockery of the sport. No matter what the decision regarding a points deduction for Bradford, the RFL will have the suspicion of favouritism hanging over them in this case because they will be seen to be protecting their asset in Odsal if they let the Bulls off or they will be accused of wasting the games money if they come down hard and the Bulls end up in the Championship.

And my statement was and still is correct....so long as the decision is not Adeybull's to make, then it's neither here nor there as to what he thinks.

I had a discussion a while back with Adey - over OKs input. I understand Adeys view re any initial 'investment' which should be treated as Share Capital and thus these shares would be worthless in any Administration.

However - and only the Administrator and a few others - know how OK put further monies on a weekly basis - to keep the club alive. Its these monies which have to be analysed to see whether 'Investment' or 'Loan Account'.

As an aside - Many years ago I was a Chairman of a RL club who basically paid monies (foolishly) into the Clubs Bank account to keep the club afloat but on the Clubs Insolvency my weekly inputs ranked in the Unsecured Creditors pile rather than Share Capital. It didnt matter anyway as the Creditors got nought as well!

In your quest to find a % debt paid to points deducted ratio; I found a copy of the admin report for Wakefield:
Total debt £1.28M
HMRC £774k
Sir Rodney Walker £184k
Macron (kit supplier)£20k
total number of unsecured creditors 93
mostly a few hundred to a few grand each

Only preferential creditor was office staff redundancy £10k

The was a floating charge debenture to Bank of Scotland £112k from Dec. '92, but it suggests not much was likely to be realised? age/value of asset?

So, assuming the tax man was avoided, it gives you some idea of the scale.

With the greatest of respect you are using words such as 'suggest' and 'should' which are still rather fuzzy.
Therefore I assume it's not nailed on either way. As such after the RFL have in the past been accused of favouritism would they seem to want to be at it again?
Also if this whole idea (Admin) was the RFL's idea as some have suggested then I do wonder if they will end up in court alongside the current Bradford bulls board if OK goes through with his threat.

Cheers mate, that is very helpful indeed.

Must admit I am staggered at the scale of the debt there. I'd always assumed, as I think had most people, that the Bulls' insolvency was on a far bigger scale than Wakefield's, and that was one reason why the club's new owner was hammered financially by the other clubs. Now it see it was not so, and the scales were broadly similar. Indeed, the amount owing to HMRC, and therefore the loss to the taxpayer, was 50% HIGHER than at Bradford. Amazing.

Looks like the maximum the unsecured creditors could have been was about £300k. Glover was reported as saying he settled with some of them. If we said 50% of them (I would be surprised if on that scale, but maybe it was, or even more?). That would mean pay £150k of creditors, don't pay HMRC: 2 points mitigation.

So the Bulls new owners could presumably avail themselves of that precedent, and get a 4-point deduction?

Or, they could do what they seem to have indicated that they will do (we'll see what actually happens, of course - but let's take it at face value for now), and settle with all the creditors, including HMRC. Why would they want to do that, if they still got a 4-point points deduction? Why not instead just pay off £150k (or whatever) and use the rest of what you were otherwise going to pay to invest heavily in the team, to seek to avoid relegation that way?

Seems to me that those folk clamouring for a substantial points penalty might want to be very careful what they wish for?

You very much have my respect for trying to keep your club afloat. I'd suggest that, and your experience, makes you far more qualified than most to comment on this and other matters, so I'll remember that fior the future.

Yes, quite right in that the legal form is unsecured creditor. I have never said otherwise, and that is what those who disagree with my argument likewise correctly state. And that is how the administrator will treat what is owed to OK, in law.

My argument has consistently been one of substance over legal form. When the statement of affairs is filed, I think people will be surprised at just how little OK actually "invested" in the club in the form of shares. Basically, he did not invest in the club much at all, in the sense most folk would imagine it. He instead loaned it money. You and I can speculate as to why he did it that way, but the simple fact is the company was very seriously undercapitalised. As the sole owner on a brand new company, inheriting a business totally free from any inherited debt or creditors, I submit that he took on the responsibility to ensure the business was placed on a reasonably sound financial footing. And, as with any investor, with your investment comes risk that you mitght lose some or all of your investment should the business founder. That is what happened here, and that is why I am arguing that - in substance - the RFL would be quite entitled to discount what is owed to OK when considering the extent to which creditors are repaid.

And I would fully expect Wakefield and other supporters to make exactly the same case if roles were reversed. As indeed did London Broncos supporters, and those of numerous other clubs, when that club went into liquidation a few years ago. Owing £1/2m to HMRC and £1m or so to their owner. The roar that what was owed to the owner was not really a creditor, but was his "investment", and that Caisley and others who played merry hell about it were talking crap, was deafening. I wonder of any of those people who told Caisley he was talking crap then (and, as regards the owner's loan, IMO he was, and it was embarrassing) are now arguing precisely the opposite?

Indeed, nothing is nailed on at all. Including the extent to which the creditors WILL be settled. So all this remains totally hypothetical. I do sense a campaign being waged to seek to influence any decision-making process, but that came as no surprise whatsoever to me, even if it may have done to some much nearer the action. Indeed, I may or may not even have warned that I expected it, to people very close indeed to the action. And, in desperate times you really cannot blame people for fighting their own club's corner, can you?

The RFL are of course between a rock and a hard place whatever they do. At the moment, I'm struggling to see how they can possibly justify confiscating half the new owners' 2014 Sky money, when those guys were not party to the original agreement nor was the present company. They will have to make the new owners agree to that confiscation, and the new owners could easily argue that is eveidence of extreme discrimination against one club in favour of all the rest. So it will cut both ways - especially since the financial penalty is far far far more severe than a points deduction.

As for court action, you known what? It might not be so bad if it DOES get to court. Because I suspect there is a great deal that would interest a lot of people that might just come out. Stuff that might just help outsiders gain a better understanding of why things happened, and might just trigger the law of unexpected consequences for some of the protaganists. The roles of the other directors, especially Sutcliffe the local MP, former sports minister, who was deputy chairman and very high profile in the early days before the shìt started hitting the fan financially (gone missing in recent months), would obviously come under close public scrutiny then. Of course, if he and others are quite happy with their conduct in office, doubtless they would welcome the opportunity for public exoneration. Their conduct (and that of the current gang of threee) will of course anyway be the subject of investigation by the administrator, who is obliged to present his report on that to the authorities. Again, assuming all of them conducted themselves properly and responsibly in office, they will have nothing to fear.

Irrelevant. It is now how they feel, but what they do. I told you what they did.


If OK "did not loan" the Bradford Bulls money and there isn't paperwork then the loan doesn't exist


Er... what claim would that be, then?


Then you might imagine wrong.




Fool. How can a sport's governing body not "get involved" in the case of a club it governs which is in difficulty? In any case, you "suspecting" some bizarre thing is worthy of no further comment. I suspect they don't.


No, it isn't. It is making a mockery of Bradford Bulls. trust you to go into hyperbole mode.


This is true, as there are trolls, ill-wishers and lunatics who have entrenched views or malicious agendas and they will not deviate, but given the RFL always were and always will be damned if they do, and damned if they don't, on what basis should they take into account any of these people whatsoever?





But you post ream after ream presumably on the basis of a conviction that what YOU think and post IS "here or there". How weird. And, for the reason stated, your statement was, just plain wrong. It still is. And it will be tomorrow. And the day after. Repeating your incorrect statement will not make it right.

If we are to believe that the RFL have said, a decsion will be made on a points deduction this week.
That in itself seems a bizarre decision if you still don't have ownership fully confirmed. The way I see it there are 2 options:

1) The precedent sets out a deduction of points equivalent to 3 wins (although as we have seen this can be reduced). If they are to make a decision this week then they should deduct the whole 6 points (at this stage) but clearly state that upon the resolution of ownership, and therefore the facts becoming known as to what will be repaid, that figure may be reduced.
Bradford could then get on with trying to make up the difference in points (and if you get some back later that's a bonus).

2) They announce that no deduction will be made until the ownership has been resolved but they set a timescale for that to happen that is immovable (say the end of March).

Either way, everyone then knows where they stand and can get on with playing the sport instead of worrying about off-field issues.


I actually agree regards OK's "investment" that it is precisely that, no matter how he actually describes it.
If everything other than OK was paid back I could understand and accept a decision of 0 points deduction.


I know other Wakey fans will disagree but having read comments from all sides on this, that is how I personally would judge it.


The only other thing I would like to see come out of this whole sorry saga is a clearly defined set of rules regarding financial (mis)management that means any future instances by any clubs are dealt with swiftly and fairly in the eyes of all concerned.