Its been common knowledge for sometime the Bradford Bulls was suffering in silence and it hurt me as a fan to watch Wakefield go through such turmoil when we went into administration and not feel bitter when the RFL stepped in to help purchase the ground

Our club was stripped to the bare bones and rightly so to make way for the future that is looking so bright for us now whether we move to Newmarket or not, now you will have to hope that the same can be done at Bradford but I fear the debt is far too greater.

It doesn't give me any pleasure it see this happen and I do hope the club can pull through this but the problem lays deeper within the game its self, you only have to see other clubs and their attendances, if we are not careful the game will just disappear.

I would of done the same if I was you in trying to fight the clubs corner, if I was you I would get the club to realise that they need to down size and ground share with Bradford City, its not as bad as the prospect of sharing with a rival club is it.

I too would like to see Whitehead and Burgess make there way to Wakefield

IMO - there's very little point in the "well they are a big club and they wouldn't bat an eyelid if it was us" argument. At the end of the day, a historic club which brings many fans, sponsors and investors into the sport that we love is in dire straits and we all should band round and try and help them through it.

I'll not forget the support we got off the Hull fans one year when we were being docked points - that's what our game is all about.

It’s a heartbreaking time for the Bradford supporters & we can speak from experience.

However, one way or another they’ll come through it.

Looking back to when we were in the mire a few Bradford fans were sympathetic eg.





Many were ambivalent, however on poster has a different view.




And to him



Merry Christmas

.

This is where my concern lies, the RFL didn't hesitate in pointing out the Crusaders speculative financial business plan, however Bradford were admitted in the 2012-2014 SL with a grade B license with a poor ground, poor community game structure, poor youth development and what now has emerged poor financial planning, what exactly did they have that was classed as good, from SL licensing results it says about Bradford bulls
[i"The club has a solid fan base, a strong brand and good operating structure/governance in place. However the club faces some challenges."[/i
Also it stated [i
"Poor recent on-field performance and an ageing facility. The application acknowledges these challenges; however the club believes that its business plan for the next three years will move it to a position of sustainability with good prospects for further growth."[/i

The RFL have been clearly shown up here, what a total load of BULL (excuse the pun

) this has been.
I feel sorry for the Fans/Players and to a degree the BoD, the RFL had a responsibility here and have clearly failed IMHO

are you suggesting that some clubs were .......FIBBING

shouldnt you be playing rounders in the superbowl car pack, oops sorry school holidays next week

On the basis that Parkin was sniffing last year, any bets he ends up as a millionaire benefactor? It could be the best thing that happened to them.

Stopped at page 4 half way down as it descends into petty playground slapping.

And as for 1 of our posters whom i think should really know better , your bitterness is getting worse and if you were an animal i would take you to the P D S A and have the decent thing done. You begged support for years from us yet once again you revel in someone's misery , you really are a very sad man and when you spout on about true rugby fan you need to ask your friend TRB what that means.

We were lumping our pants not to long ago many trolls from far n wide came on to spout glee and tripe but amongst the medium powers of specific Eddie n co was quite a lot of support.

read between the lines . the bulls fans who for years have invested in many cases monies they could ill afforded have like us in previous years been lied to and crapped on . dont ridicule them. give the suits a hard time.

will i donate . NO , its like giving a bone to a dog who's just bitten your kiddies .

Super Leauge is Death if the Bulls are dieing then give me proof im wrong

Despite the RFL securing the lease for the Bulls, he may well get his hands on Odsal afterall?
Funny old world and all that!!

I agree. The RFL left us to go into the but thanks to Mr Glover we have pulled through it and will be stronger than ever.
The Bulls are not the only ones in trouble, they are just the only ones we know about

I'm another that doesn't give a flying fig what state the Bulls are in, Cas either. They both could go bust or both have a billionaire owner. Survival of the fittest and all that, i didnt see much sympathy for us when we were going down the pan, only the merger shout or gloating at our misfortune. There may have been the odd genuine fan supporting us, but in the main a healthy percentage would have quite happily seen us relegated.
If they go bust another team gets SL status and the chance of glory, why does SL "need" the Bulls so much, it's beyond me.

Here's another angle. The RFL demand that clubs have a high number of members, and so clubs like the Bulls offer lots of season tickets at ridiculous prices to meet that requirement. I wonder if things would have been different if they had been able to sell them at the going rate without worrying about the impact of lower memberships on the franchise application.

5,000 tickets at £200 brings in the same amount as pre-sales as 10,000 at £100, and many of those extra 5,000 would have gone to maybe half the games anyway, adding in another £100 per fan. If those were the figures, for example, the Bulls have thrown away half a million a year in ticket revenue. How much do they need again?

alot of sense was talked about by andrew henderson on radio leeds on sunday.he said the salery cap should be lowerd to 1,3 mill .i agree with him, and the rfl should come down on those who break it. it gives most teams a good shot to have some top playersin there team. it works in aus why not here?

It all makes sense now thats why the RFL wanted Stobarts as our main sponsors! Its so they can help them with the flit from their Odsal premises



Now lets go pick the bones Whitehead Burgess and Bateman for me.

what bradford need is a barbecue, run by kinley with able assistance from your truly, in time of administration talk your forum will fill quite rapidly and selling a large sausage for say a pound a go could well help worked wonders for us.

just seen the bulls stobart lorry too it has the doors wide open and there is nothing in it.

Parkin was only interested in us if we agreed to go into administration. Ted didn't want to risk that and was hoping for a reprieval through getting NM - when that failed he had no choice and Parkin came sniffing once more but withdrew because we could guarantee neither a licence or NM.

Parkin, or any other investor, will not take on the Bulls in their current form - there is too much debt burden for that. He MAY be interested if the club goes into administration - and he would have one of his pre-requisites, a guaranteed licence, but then again, he would only be able to get a club and not the asset of Odsal as that belongs to the RFL!

I have sympathy for the Bulls fans - they have travelled in numbers and their club was once one to be proud of but, as Jack said, they have a dirty side to their management which is un-matched in the game - even Huddersfield have better business scruples!

What gauls me the most is that shambolic announcement and pack-of-lies about the ground being bought by the RFL because of it's iconic status - what baloney! Anyone could work out that that was not true and what the real reasons were - and yet we treated appaulingly by both the Bull media machine and, worse, the RFL.

I would not be sorry to see the back of Hood & Co, but the RFL's involvement in this, their knowledge of the true situation and the fact that we could have been removed from SL to keep these propped up, means that is the RFL who have my utter contempt in this matter. Our game is in tatters and they pat themselves on the back - disgraceful!

You tell 'em sunshine, although my large sausage is not public knowledge, I certainly wasn't aware of it and Mrs KC says she considers it to be somewhat of an exaggeration!!
As you were!!

Do you think its as black and white as that? They could have just loaned them some more money, or not ask for the money back that they had loaned them before that no one seemed to know about.

The RFL might say it is all about perception, and looks bad for the game if one of the sacred cows goes down. It does, but there should be more even-handedness.

Having said that, we have done okay by the RFL. We have got two franchises on the basis of unfulfilled promises (at the moment) of grounds, and they could have easily chosen Fax over us if they were against us, or even done something to bail out the Crusaders.

In my opinion they should have done more for the Crusaders - if that was their stated intention - and we should all be grown up enough to appreciate the additional value they 'potentially' could have brought and backed it. Same goes for London.

Where it goes wrong is in trying to be seen to be even handed - when clearly they are not - and then pretending to judge us all by the same criteria - when we are not!

It is possible to derive a system that allows for some to receive 'special treatment' and it should be right for the game, through it's governing body, to assist a club in need (when it can), but not at the expense of other clubs under a system which is ambiguous at best.

The Bulls have poached our players, outbid us for juniors and spent the full salary cap when they couldn't afford it. The licencing system, the salary cap etc were all intended to ensure that club's didn't make these type of mistakes - yet clearly Bradford managed it - and so did we, but the reaction we got was a little more under-whelming!

I feel sorry for the bulls, it seems like a much wider english rl problem to me. The salary cap is too high and clearly clubs are spending beyond their means like bradford dishing out new contracts and then asking for a hand out. Halve the cap and make the league more competitive, surely if everyone spends to it and it's watched like a hawk. Make the game about development to benefit the international game (preferably for a GB team.) which will bring nationwide sponsorship deals.
Three clubs going to the wall in a year suggests the superleague are not managing the game as they should because i see plenty of info about more fans and more t.v viewers not least on the V.T.
Or is it just bad club management over and over again?

Interestingly, it could be that move by the RFL that prevents them being rescued - with the lease to Odsal held by the RFL, any investor is committing to paying the rent and operating costs, but has no assetts to borrow against; equally, anyone who thought about grabbing the club then moving them somewhere else and realising the value of Odsal to pay themselves back, is similarly stymied.

They're in a pickle; it looks like administration is the only way out, but given the increasingly desperate suggestion that Bradford are a RL institution that we need in the game, I wouldn't be at all surprised if the RFL don't step in with some kind of measures to protect them.

Only this afternoon, Blake Solly was on the radio urging Bradford fans to part with their £100 to save the club; a rather irresponsible thing to do, not least because they didn't make a similar plea when WTW were in the shiz and equally, because giving money to the current BoD at Bradford is throwing good money after bad.

Like many others who have already posted, my sympathies are with the fans (we all know how they're feeling) and also with the players who have no real certainty about their futures right now.

For the game's sake, I hope that the Bulls used the money from selling the Odsal lease to the RFL to clear longer term debts based on the priority of any security that was in place. If they haven't and the club goes into Administration, the sale could be declared invalid which would mean that the RFL have to hand the lease back but will have lost their money.

Aside from the potential (and almost inevitable) fire-sale of players, it occurs to me that the Bulls' Super League licence could be considered an asset that may be sold to raise funds to repay creditors. Not sure how that would work out in reality, but may be a possibility.

admin is on the cards but with the RFL could frighten the like of Parkin away


as for the corrupt RFL it just keeps showing its self up time after time

that could work for next two season if the club could afford it as for this season too many matches have been played

All spot on Kinleycat...but huge sympathy to Bulls fans. We all love our clubs and this hurts