I agree. Apply the rules fairly now and I have no problem

I'll help your case out then by disputing what you said there!

"Lots of clubs..."?

One club - Leeds - paid a proportion of their gate receipts (the amount paid by away fans, IIRC?) to the administrator. In mid-season. After the club had gone bust. Without which, the administrator said he would likely have shut the club down for good. Don't think you were ever in that situation?

Two other clubs - Wire and Hudds - paid about £10k in total (mostly from Wire) to our Supporters' Trust's Hardship Fund. This was used to pay coaching etc staff who had all been sacked by the administrators and were carrying on working for nothing. This enabled some limited donations to those guys to be made - still a fraction of what their normal salaries would have been. Don't thing you were ever in that situation? And pray you never are.

As always - and if the likes of Bren2k and their warped recollection of what actually happened don't like it, well there is only one version of the truth - all I seek to do is set the facts out and the record straight. However unpalatable the truth might be to those who would like to think it was otherwise.

Not putting you in that category, btw - far from it. I WOULD say that you have consistently been a voice of sanity and reason in a sea of distortion, misinformation and downright vitriol. But I realise that comments of that nature would destroy your credibility with most on here, so I won't.

So you agree that when Bulls went bust in 2012, we should only have been docked 4 points? Or maybe not had £1.3m Sky money confiscated, £100k of which came to your club?

Or that maybe you should have had £1.3m confiscated too?

No?

Well if the response is "our circumstances were different to Bradford's then" - and probably with full justification - then that's fine. They doubtless were.

But you surely cannot then object if anyone was to seek to apply a similar differentiation of circumstances now?

shouldn't you be gearing up for another car washing session

Didn't Widnes also give some cash to you Adey? Think you missed them out. Edit - Yes you did: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... idnes.html

Didn't Widnes also give some cash to you Adey? Think you missed them out. Edit - Yes you did: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... idnes.html

You can always tell when some folk cannot argue objectively with what has been said

Instead of reasoned response, they instead resort to derision.

Speaks volumes about them, wouldn't you say?

Half the cap is £800k. FFS, stop bleating on about losing half your Sky money. You suggested and accepted this condition.

Then you wiped the slate clean and knew you'd have to operate without. You haven't. You didn't. And you're in this situation again.

Class.....

Quote ="Fully"Didn't Widnes also give some cash to you Adey? Think you missed them out. Edit - Yes you did: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... idnes.html'" The point raised was about shares of gate receipts. All of these were post-appointment of administrators. The donation from Steve O'Connor was made in a personal capacity, not from the Widnes club. And to the pledge campaign, about three months BEFORE the administration. So your point is relevant to any of the [iad nauseum[/i debates or whatever about the pledge campaign, but not to the specific I was setting the record straight about.

Quote ="Fully"Didn't Widnes also give some cash to you Adey? Think you missed them out. Edit - Yes you did: www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/rugbyl ... idnes.html'" The point raised was about shares of gate receipts. All of these were post-appointment of administrators. The donation from Steve O'Connor was made in a personal capacity, not from the Widnes club. And to the pledge campaign, about three months BEFORE the administration. So your point is relevant to any of the [iad nauseum[/i debates or whatever about the pledge campaign, but not to the specific I was setting the record straight about.

Bleating?

I was simply pointing out that you seek identical treatment when it suits, but not when it does not. As in the case of the Sky money confiscation.

You really think this confiscation was a suggestion by the prospective new owner? DO you REALLY believe that? It was the price exacted by a majority of the other clubs a sthe price for allowing the Bulls to retain a SL Licence. Even if they will not admit to it. A price they never exacted of you.

Ha ha. Thanks for that.
I think I'm beyond help with my credibility so say it how you see it......

I'm a Cas fan, so they don't need to "exact" anything off of us.

Wakefield paid some of their creditors back. You didn't, hence the six point deduction and the financial penalty. I'm sure if Wakey had walked away from everything, they'd have got a similar punishment.

If your owner was against it, why didn't he oppose it; better still, why not come up with an alternative solution? Or why didn't he pay some of the creditors to appease the situation?

Was the Sky money halving not suggested by Omar Khan to redress the inequity that the RFL had paid Bradford £ 1.2m for the lease on Odsal, a lease that if the iconic stadium is preserved appears pretty much useless to anyone other than Bradford Bulls?

Sorry for responding to you as if you were a Trinity fan. I realise no apology can be sufficient, but you certainly have my profuse apologies.

I responded to your points because I thought they were reasoned and sensible. Just maybe you were a bit short on some of the facts - sadly all too common.

As it happens, I agree with you about the more severe points deducton. Although I think it would have been applied regardless, as a means of (they assumed) ensuring the Bulls could not make the playoffs. In the interests of the clarity that so many in here crave, it WOULD be helpful to know just what creditors were paid off though. SO we had some sort of precedent to judge against.

When we asked Khan & Sutcliffe why they accepted the condition, they said it was that or nothing. They seemed to say that paying off some creditors would have made no difference - some of the other SL clubs were adamant. I must admit, when the money was confiscated, my first assumption was that the RFL would use the money to pay off the creditors (it would have been sufficient to do that). I would have been at ease with that, as I said at the time. I was pretty staggered when it was not so applied. Even more so when I learned that it was being shared out amongst the other clubs, increasing the differnetial to £3/4m p.a.

My understanding is that the reduction in Sky money was supported by other clubs because of their anger at the underhand tactics used by the RFL in their secret bail-out for the Bulls, and the subsequent lies and spin they used to try to cover it up. The club chairmen were hacked off about that, and rightly so.

You know the guy who stands in the street with the 'End of the World is Nigh' billboard that most people ignore and some howl derision at.........

Not at all. Its not the only ground the RFL bought either, remember.

The RFL get £78k p.a. in rent. A perfectly acceptable return compared to money in the bank. More to the point, the peppercorn head lease is actually quite valuable. If they were to surrender it back to the Council, so the council could redevelop the site (a prime location just off the motorway) I would expect they could demand a good price. It would almost certainly suit the council for the RFL to do just that (and force the Bulls to Valley Parade, something they tried before).

If it was such a poor deal for the RFL and a good deal for the Bulls, why did the likes of Caisley state publically that the sale to the RFL was at a scandalous underprice, and did their best to see if they could overturn it or take action against Hood for selling it?

Maybe they, and/or others, deduced that various parties showing interest in buying the Bulls were after the site not the club, and planned to move the club to VP and get the council to buy them out of the head lease? At a big profit, no doubt? Or else allow them to develop the site for other use, again with potential for big profit?

FWIW, my own view is that the RFL win in this whatever happens. No way will they come out of this showing any kind of a loss. I'll not agree with Caisley et al that it was a deal so biased in favour of the RFL it was untrue - end of the day, the RFL held all the cards and Bulls virtually none. But I DO think they saw an opportunity and took it.

You could well be right. Although there were plenty of precedents for the RFL loaning clubs money. This whole loan business, and then taking over the stadium for what was at best an extra £400k or so, was scandalously underhand. I made a total fool of myself congratulating the then-board on what seemed to be a far-from-ideal but necessary deal in the middle of a recession, only to later learn about the loan. And the scale of it. So you'll get no argument form me now on that subject.

Fact remains though that, for whatever the reason, the other clubs were determined to punish the new owners for the sins of the old. I belive some of them were of the view "I have put many milions into my club. Let someone do the same with the Bulls." Except, no-one stepped forward to do so

This demonstrates one big difference between why the Bulls were punished far far more heavily than Wakey. And for reaons that are hard to argue with. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever argue Wakey should have suffered a financial penalty like Bulls did.

Equally, did any other club become a football between two warring groups of shareholders? I remain firmly of the view that the loss to creditors was far more because of how the adminsitration was brought about than it would have been had the shareholders worked together. Indeed, we will never know if the club could have been saved from administration had the then-board been allowed to continue. THEY certainly believed it would. But that can only ever be an opinion.

But it also demonstrates why no two situations are the same. And therefore why, when demanding equality fo treatment, thay really requires equality of circumstance too. And, unfortunately, none of us know to what extent that is the case or otherwise, nor is it ever likley to be made public. The only ones who will are the RFL, who are tasked with determining what action to take.

Coincidence that's Woodies pie budget, I think not

Stuff and nonsense; only you could turn Odsalgate into some kind of Machiavellian plot by the RFL to make some brass out of the Bulls. I don't believe that you believe that.

I don't. Because I never said that. Caisley & co implied they thought that. I said above I did not subscribe to that view. I didn't then (and railed publically at them for alleging it) and I don't now.

What I DID say, and what I believed then and believe now, is that the RFL win whatever happens. They got a SL club able to fulfil its fixture obligations, when there was no clear alternative to take their place at such short order, and with a better return on their investment than money in the bank; and with potential to e.g. move to there from Red Hall in the future (saving loads) and develop the site as a RL HQ if they so wished. Or, if it all went tìts up, an asset the council would love to get their hands on and doubtless be open to a decent deal for doing so.

No sinister plot by the RFL; just smart business, at limited risk. Indeed, precisely what you would want to see from them?

If we could cut out some of the ad hominem nonsense, surely there could be chance of a sensible debate? That is the only reason I ever occasionally come on here (usually giving up in exasperation afetr a while), despite what you might choose to think.

ps. the "They" in the penultimate paragraph of the post you were responding to? For the avoidance of doubt, that was Caisley & co - not the RFL. Maybe I did not make that clear? I actually think the RFL stepped in, at least in part, to help prevent someone getting the club just to make a quick buck on the site.

Exactly OK offered to waive a year of Sky money. Several SL clubs suggested that rather than pass on £1.2m OK should take 50% over 2 years. Some Bulls fans like to talk about consfiscating funds. Utter rubbish. Those Bulls fans with a problem about the sky money should speak to Kahn / Sutcliffe and others with OK Bulls.

A sport governing body is not created as a front for property development. It is not the job of a sport governing body to pump significant funds into some clubs and not others. It is mainly a group of self interested Bulls fans who continually defend the odsal purchase.

I don't know what point you are trying to make, but that is the rent. Its deducted from the monthly Sky monies payment, as I understand it.

THAT is stuff and nonsense.

Indeed, Bren2k confirms what I said about the "offer" being no such thing. It was that or nothing. Regardless of what it was agreed would be said in public.

I do not even understand your second point. I cannot see what in what I said you are taking issue with? I never said any of the things in that paragraph.

See my PS to Bren2k's post above. Maybe you misunderstood my point because I did not make clear to whom I was referring?

I do not dispute the figures you quote Adey, but the RFL have clearly stated they have no intention of doing anything other than maintaining Odsal as a stadium and keeping it safe from predatory developers. The RFL's statement about saving the Iconic Stadium effectively makes that investment worthless to them.

None of us know for sure the Murkey details of the Omar Khan agreement to stay in SL, but there was considerable discontent at the Odsal deal, rightly or otherwise I had always understood that was the reason for the Sky reduction. I am sure I read that somewhere but in truth it could have been on a forum/twitter.

Accepting for arguements sake the potential value of Odsal I do have to wonder why stay with a millstone when a move could be salvation? It does seem that Previous custodians of the Bradford Club have let you down far more than I realised.

It is quite extraordinary to watch so much debate over a ruling from the RFL which has not even been made. Absolutely extraordinary, but there is so much at stake and that breeds fear and that makes the RFL decision so hard. Should the Bulls be punished for a second administration in so short a time? In my view yes, but what punishment, it must be seen to be just but also should not be so harsh that the Bulls are left without hope.

What will that punishment be? I have no idea, neither would I like to be making that decision, somebody will be upset by it and with good reason. That is what happens when rules are written to leave too much discretion. What is correct and fair from you perspective may be different from mine yet both views may be justifiable under the vagueness expressed in the RFLs documents. That is just not right.

If for example the rules stated if you suffer an insolvency event the penalty is x points, if you settle all Rugby and HMRC debt then it is reduced by 50% then there would be no dispute. The rules are inadequate and need re-written