THE man hoping to buy the Bulls insists that the club will live within their means under his watch.

Chris Brereton is leading the consortium looking to take over from chairman Andrew Chalmers and rescue them from the latest financial turmoil.

The club are understood to owe more than £500,000 to creditors and are faced with losing players to help pay off the debts.

Brereton insists belts will be tightened if he takes charge as part of a four-point action plan similar to the one he implemented with Michael Carter at Wakefield in 2013 – with a view to getting the Bulls debt-free within a couple of years.

Speaking exclusively to the Telegraph & Argus, Brereton said: “It’s just like any business, it’s got to live within its means.

“Because there’s a ball involved, people like to forget about that but unfortunately PAYE and VAT don’t. It’s a business and can only spend money that it earns.

“If you’ve got difficulty in accepting that, then somebody else needs to step forward.

“I can’t attempt running a business that you know full well from day one you’re going to lose money. Our aim would be four-fold.

“We want to trade through the club’s present position and try and get it debt free within a couple of years.

“We’ll try to keep the club in the Championship or hopefully above and deliver to Bradford a rugby league club it can sustain.

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and then being surprised and disappointed at the result. Somebody has got to break that cycle.

“When we went into Wakefield, I didn’t find a window or a till that was open. Tenners weren’t blowing out the window.

“We didn’t find a tap or a boiler that’s been left on. It was just spending too much money on players – that’s where it all goes.”

The potential buy-out still has to go before the RFL board for approval and Brereton confirmed that negotiations are on-going.

“We’re waiting for a couple of things from Andrew,” he added.

“I’m not so sure we’ll be able to get it over the line this week but maybe the middle of next week.”

That could coincide with the two fans forums set up for Tuesday and Wednesday at Dewsbury’s Tetley’s Stadium, where the Bulls will be based next year.

Brereton has no interest in the limelight if he takes over but feels it is important to address the concerns of the supporters.

He said: “So much negativity was out there and we felt we had to call them in and just give them one voice.

“This started for me in March when I offered to give assistance to Andrew. I absolutely did not go looking to be taking over another ailing rugby league club.

“But I do think it’s got some potential. I put on over 100 first-team events on at Belle Vue and we never got a crowd of over 7,500, and that includes the Million Pound Game against Bradford.

“Bradford have had two crowds in excess of that last season. Obviously, there was an unusual event of playing Leeds in the Challenge Cup but it does show that the support is there.

“They’ve just been beaten up a bit too much really.”

£500,000 worth of debt. Remember when people were saying the only reason for the special measures was the RFL doing it out of spite for moving out of Odsal? I think that's been proven well and truly wrong now eh?
The RFL may have a lot to answer for over the start of Chalmers' journey, but it sounds like stopping the club spending even more money on players when they weren't paying their bills was doing the right thing.

The club's published accounts showed debts of some £790k, with net liabilities of £580k, on Jan 31st 2018. Can't see how those figures will have improved significantly in the 20 months since then.

I fully expect the new potential owners are wanting some sort of supporter led vehicle to raise funds. I don't see why anyone would hold a fans forum BEFORE they've actually taken over.

On the face of it, there's not a lot to disagree with in the T&A piece.

In particular



It looks inevitable that we will going fully part-time, which means that the full time players will be leaving. I take that from his indications about 'living within our means', not from inside knowledge.

So long as we don't get a point deduction (and ti doesn't sound like we are going into Admin) and so long as we keep John Kear, then I see no reason why we shouldn't be in a position to pull together a squad that survives next season in the Championship. I don't think Whitehaven or Oldham will be pulling up any trees next season, so avoiding the drop should be feasible.

Noted that the report said nothing about Odsal, beyond the hint that the 'new shop' might actually be the old shop. So who knows...

The same thought has crossed my mind. I can fully see a plea of "If you want a club, we need you to pay for it" with bells, whistles and glitter on.

Maybe I'm just being cynical after we've heard so many previous owners say similar and try to squeeze as much out of every fan as possible, but I don't see what other plan they may have.

Sufficed to say as much as I've said I'll give a new owner a chance, if that's how it starts I'll be out again before I'm back.

I have a feeling it will be something like majority of part time clubs do, raise funds for signings etc has worked particular well for Halifax and Fev amongst others.

As a club we seem to be in dire straits. This guy has come in, seemingly the only option, he has a reputation of getting clubs in similar positions back to life but hasn’t by his own admission, apparently got the financial clout to write a cheque to get rid of the debts. Whilst its tough on the fans, they need us now more than ever so if a scheme akin to what other clubs run, very successfully, is a big support to the owner is this unreasonable? IMO we have only two other options, liquidation or admin

I'm sure it's a reasonable suggestion for some fans, but it's not for me personally. A large part of my getting disillusioned with the club was the constant begging to the fans for money. Whether it through poor quality merchandise at high prices, or through high ticket prices. I personally got to a point where I was tired of the talk of "You have to pay for it" as we'd heard nothing else but that from Hood, Khan and Green for the previous few years (and this time I do include Khan deliberately). I'm not saying they're wrong to go down that route, but I was tired of shelling out so much money all the time and it still ending up tits up. So I said enough was enough and I walked away. I've not been back in just short of 2 years.
Whilst I'm willing to give any new owner a chance as I did the others, there are certain things that will pretty much have me sack it straight away. One of those is the same old "We need you to pay for it" no matter how it's dressed up. Personally I'd rather they say they have ideas and plans to make fans want to come back, to make them want to buy merchandise. Not just a fancy way of getting the begging bowl out again.

Whilst I understand your point We need a quick fix now whilst we allow CB to get a handle on things, he can’t do both. I cling to the hope that eventually we get an owner who can add up and in the meantime I might be needed to help in a small sort of way

The problem is, they've all said that. They've all said "you give us loads of money for the first couple of years, then we'll be high flying in Super League and be able to give you season tickets for a tenner". Well maybe not quite that extreme, but the point remains.
Even after all the crap, I think plenty of people will pay it and will be happy to help. I won't be one of them.