Doesn't say much for KPMG either!!!

We don't know what remit they were given or whether any of their findings were swept under the carpet. If they were told to do a thorough audit and did not highlight their concerns, then I agree, but I think this is unlikely.

Where are all the ex players and TV personalities who used emotional blackmail to get the Bulls fans into pledging money?

Just keep Sykes and get Elima IMHO.

It's true, we dont know but, they did receive a loan from the RFL last season and the RFL then took over the lease on Odsal due to non payment of the loan. Therefore, regardless of the findings during the licensing process, I think its fair to say the RFL knew the true picture but, at the time it would have been unthinkable to "demote" the Bulls and allow Halifax to be promoted.
Even with the benefit of hindsight, it would have been a very difficult call.

I wouldn't want Burgess anyways, he's useless. He was only on the pitch 5mins on Sunday and was blowing out of his . And please please please don't let me see the headline " Jeffries Returns To Wildcats"

I thought they were referring to Chase and the 'want away' Daryl Clark? - though who actually knows what's going on in the boardrooms and accountants offices of any of the clubs? I feel really sorry for the Bulls fans - when it happened to us it was the most depressing and worrying (Rugby related) time.

If Hemmings, Stephenson and the Statistics Bore of Bolton go on much more about how the franchise system is the best thing since sliced bread, I may just have to start watching the televised matches with the sound off! It seems, in simple terms to the fan on the terraces that "It Isn't Working!!!!" and if we carry on like this we'll have a number of great stadia but far fewer good Rugby teams left to play in them. And if a club does go under? Do the RL dole out a franchise/licence to the highest bidder with a nice stadium - or to a team that can play a good game of Rugby?

I think they are more than aware of the state of the game this is their monster and as long as they keep the truth locked away in the red hall cellar and away from the non biased media, sky can keep the illusion going.
The game is in tatters!!!

Thing is if bulls do get kicked out then that's less revenue and people involved in the game which can't be good and will have a knock on effect on other clubs. From a selfish perspective I'm glad we got our home game with them before they go pop.

I don't agree that the game is in tatters. It's just that one club decided to run itself at a level it couldn't afford. It is notable that there has been no attempt to recoup money by selling assets, i.e., players, and it seems that the Bulls club wants its cake and eat it. It wants to put a top drawer team on the park, regardless of whether or not it can afford it.

The situation in each club has been different. Crusaders were saddled with debts accrued by the previous owner. We were hit for six by the decision to call in the ground for PI, as otherwise we would have received a payment that would have sorted the tax bill out. Bulls have been relying on crowds of 10,000 that only bring in gate receipts as if there were 4,000, due to the cut prces.

You've got to feel for the Bradford fans, we've been there and it isn't nice. I don't wish Admin on any club regardless of what a small minority of opposing fans might say. I have to say, i'm rather disappointed with the previous management who knew the trouble and didn't even try and recoup some funds via transfers and/or loans.

They've overspent on their cap knowingly and for that reason i'd make a move for Brett Kearney & Elima

It's not the Bulls in isolation Slugger, there are big financial conserns at many clubs, either the image rights issue, the need for a benefactor, clubs living beyond their means, falling fowl of HMRC etc etc.
The constant in all this is the RFL overseeing all this.
Any club could go pop at any time and I wouldn't be surprised, that isn't what SL promised and the licensing and independent auditing tells us.
We only find out about these problems when something goes wrong and at some point the RFL are waste deep in the Shizen or have gone some way to cause it or cover it up.
SL is not only in tatters it also through trying to portray itself to be some kind of achievable best practice eutopia, encourages clubs to over reach and thus cause themselves and end up in difficulty, and unable to get out of it.
It lacks honesty and transparency and the RFL and sky peddle the lie.

I agree totally appalling. I was aghast at the appeal. My Hull supporting mate even chucked money in at their game at the KC; I told him he was nuts. A failing sports club is NOT A CHARITY. It was a disgusting abuse of people's good will and love for their club and, as suspected, was also a waste of time. Shame on all concerned and the RFL for allowing it to happen.

I can't honestly see why, provided they knew the true picture, their place should have gone to Fax, which I had a funny feeling was what was going to happen, given this was the worst kept secret in years. Halifax should feel rightly agrieved. It was us they were upset with, now look. This absolutely stinks. RL loses credibility with me as a fan. God knows what the greater sporting world think. But this is exactly what I thought franchising would bring. People in boardrooms cannot be allowed to decide who has the right to play at the top table. It is too open to prejudice and corruption and the sooner it comes to an end the better. One up, one down, provided your ground meets definite, crystal clear, objective criteria.

Quoted for truth. Easier just to blame the RFL as the easy option than look at the real reasons. Any sports club, not just rugby league, in the most part gets into trouble because of bad management, spending money they don't have, or a mix of the two.

It's conveniently forgotten that Widnes went bust when P&R was in place. They gambled and lost to Cas in the Grand Final. Not the only ones of course.

I would agree with you - IF the RFL hadn't just subjected the Bulls to a robust and thorough process of financial scrutiny, and declared them a fit and proper club to receive a SL franchise.

The real issue here is that they've now done so with two clubs and either failed to identify the impending financial meltdown at all, or identified it but failed to act.

I suppose partially correct, if you mean the Crusaders, because of course the RFL did identify the problems and twisted their arms to drop out.

Where the RFL is to blame is the box where there has to be a certain number of members. That is why clubs like Bulls and us offer season ticket prices that are unrealistic. Although our gates are up 30%, I bet our takings aren't. The difference is that we are building a groundswell to take to a new ground. The Bulls strategy was madness. 10,000 tickets at £60 a pop equates to a 3,000 crowd paying full price, but they wanted to put on the park a team that equated to 10,000 paying full price.

Some simple maths. £180 is the going rate for a normal season ticket. Let's say the Bulls could shift 3,000 season tickets at that price. That is just about what 10,000 tickets at £60 brings in. But the Bulls can get 10,000 a week, and so the other 7,000 have paid combinations of full price and concessions. If we average that out at £15 per ticket, that is £105,000 per home game. If we multiply that by the home games per season, that is £1,365,000 they are throwing away. Now, someone remind me how much extra they need a season to survive.

Unfortunately the Bulls fans thought the Wakey fans where giving them duff info about not giving the £1/2 million to help save the club, but if they had gone into admin at the start the supporters trust would have 1/2 mill ready to invest.
Although i`ve never been one of there biggest supporters , its the fans I feel for.

Of course they know, but because they have usually been covertly complicit to some dodgy course of actions prior to said club going pop, they adopt the stance of doing nothing and hoping it won't happen.
It's obvious to the wider RL public, why do you think it isn't to the RFL?
Just because they and the Sky peddle the myth that all is well in the SL garden, it doesn't mean they know it to be otherwise.

They had ten days to come up with a buyer. If i was Caisley i would wait 5 days to see if anyone comes forward. If no one comes forward then i would look at selling as many players as possible to satisfy administrators then take over the club and start again. Think it was Guilfoyle who said on radio that the players wouldn't bring that much. I don't agree they have quite a number of players who are being well courted by several clubs. If Caisley works well with admin team i am sure they will be able to do deals to satisfy all parties. When we had players sold by admin team it was a different situation Glover didn't have control of the club and therefore couldn't have any say on what happened. Maybe once this is done and a big chunk of debt is paid off it might trigger some one to come forward with less outlay of money to be risked again.

Well said Charlie.
What gets me is the fact that they asked their fans (and the wider rugby league public) to donate cash to save tham and with a bit more honesty, instead of wishful thinking, this cash could have been used to breathe life into the "new" Bulls, but now it is lost and in the longer term this will damage their efforts to gain support .

A the 10 days count down, they will be more inclined to sell their top players, indeed it will become a necessesity, however, this means that maybe Leeds, Wigan, Warrington and Hull will be the destination for these players as these few clubs are the only ones with significant cash at their disposal..

By 10 days, if no buyer is found, all the players will be free agents anyway - no fees to pay.

This is why players get sold for less than their market worth in these situations - the administrator will want to realise whatevercash he can.

AFAIK those clubs must be spending the full cap. I wonder if tyhe RFL will let them breach the cap to sign these players

I don't know that they did twist their arms to drop out - the opposite could easily be true.

Either way, the impact of their act or omission was that our club was left with an unreasonably short window in which to prepare for SL; in real terms, we had less time than Widnes to prepare for the 2012 season and we're now seeing the results of that - fail to plan, plan to fail and all that shiz.

If the RFL are capable of learning any lessons from the past 12 months or so, perhaps the most important one is that they should act more quickly when a club is known to be failing? If they'd been more robust with Bradford when the opportunities arose (first, when they didn't make any payments on their 400k loan and latterly, when they bought the lease to keep them afloat and subsequently lied about why they'd done it; and that's not even mentioning the long contracts handed out to players when they knew they were heading for a financial iceberg) then perhaps those members of the RL community, including the supporters, wouldn't now be 500k worse off with nothing to show for it? The attendant loss of goodwill is difficult to quantify, but a quick scan of RL Fans is enough to tell you that fans of other clubs are finding it difficult to be sympathetic to a club that appears to have been the author of its own misfortune.

The attitude at Red Hall seems to be one of preserving at all costs the illusion that SL is an umitigated success; in my view, they need to be more organisationally mature and understand that the failure of a member club doesn't necessarily mean that their system has failed - they'd get more respect for outing and dealing with failures consistently and with fairness. That might also have the fringe benefit of encouraging clubs to be more open and honest with them and applying more financial rigour to their operations - if they knew that financial improprieties would result in severe penalties, maybe they'd act more sensibly to avoid them?