Your first point - so you are of the view that the ends justify the means?

Your second point - Harrisgate aside: without a doubt.

Maybe a bit off topic - but reading through Adey's post above I am just trying to square the current liabilities figure being banded around of £1.5m

At the time of the pledge HMRC were chasing I think PAYE monies which were presumably cleared by the pledge to get HMRC to put their gun away.

So I can see there must be the VAT on the lease sale which was originally to have been paid by installments of £250k, one or maybe two months PAYE 2x£90k = £180k. I assume that the post admin payroll deductions would have been paid over to HMRC by BG. Plus sundry suppliers - though I assume most would have been insisting on cash payments by this stage. But adding these together and even with potential monthly losses I am struggling to get to even half the £1.5m. So are the advances made by the RFL being added to the tab?

you need to add in the 250k image rights settlement agreed with hmrc, to be paid over next 3 yrs Iirc.

Do the ends justify the means, Adey? To be honest, I think it's hard to give a simple answer to that. If some sharp practice is/was required to keep the club alive then I might be able to live with it. On the other hand, there's limit to how sharp that practice can get before it negates the good the survival of the club will do.

There's a lot to get my head round in your post and I agree that his apparent actions do not appear to have been in the best interest of the club. But do you think his motive was to do harm to a club to which he has devoted a fair proportion of his life.

I entirely share the head scratching which Adey has thoughtfully set out. There is so much that just makes little or no sense.

What was CC's motive? That is perhaps the hardest thing of all to try to guess. The majority seemed to think the appointment of Guilfoyle etc was just a barely camouflaged path to CC and his team taking over in early course. But they were wrong, as it didn't happen, and has never shown any sign whatsoever of happening. So why did he do it?

Given his lengthy denunciation is the local press, he ain't shy. It would be very interesting if some local journalist were to seek an audience with him to get an update article on how he sees the situation which has developed since he called the EGM. I wouldn't personally now like to even hazard a guess as to why he did it, nothing makes any sense.

I cannot conceive that he would ever seek knowingly to harm the club. That is what makes it all so sad, so depressing, since in my view his actions have helped bring about the very thing we have to assume he was trying to prevent. Whether down to the law of unexpected consequences, or bad luck, or some other reason. I really have no idea what his thoughts or motivations might have been, other than I do genuinely believe he will surely have been acting in what he thought was the club's best interests. Removing Hood and Bennett clearly figured very highly in his thinking in that, same as it seemed to me that getting one over on Leeds came across as figuring highly in his thinking a few years ago. In both cases, you can only question whether his seeming single-minded pursuit of a goal might have clouded his judgment? If it did (and I have no way of knowing), he will not have been the first and will definitely not be the last. Maybe Herman Melville could have explained it?

If only he had left it all alone, maybe just maybe the previous lot could have pulled it through? And, with the improving performances on the park, they might indeed have managed it I feel, albeit I don't think we would have liked the legacy for 2013 with a far leaner first team squad. But there remain significant questions that remain unanwsered, which maybe point to it only ever being a naïve or forlorn hope? I think the previous board would tell you though that they would not have had to resort to administration.

Maybe he was worried that Hood would himself put the club into administration, and himself try and buy it cheap off the administrator? I must admit, everything I saw pointed to precisely the opposite, and all I ever saw was a guy who would willingly have sold on to someone he felt he could entrust the future to; but that can only ever be an opinion, and we will now never know. But would we have been in the dire situation we are now had Caisley left it alone? Well we certainly could hardly be in any worse situation? Why did he just not let Hood try and sort out the mess, and THEN, if he was still so-minded, step in later when the worst of the work had been done? I really have no answer to that.

Caisley was fantastic for Northern and then the Bulls. He led a revolution, and he deserves full credit for the achievement, not least for his driving ambition for the club and for Superleague in general. It sickens me that we are now instead talking about him as the guy who, we must believe with the best of motives, intervened in a dire situation and only made it even worse.

Bad Mr Caisley, running up £1.5 million of debt. It's all your fault.

Care to list out what this "£1.5m" debt consists of? Or is it £1.1m?

£180k of it is almost certainly debt run up by the "new" board, plus any further advances of Sky monies on their watch. And of course any employee redundancy liabilities that may be included, as well as any other liabilities that crystalised on insolvency.

Must admit though, you are unfair in blaming Caisley for it all. At least £500k is the VAT and image rights tax from the previous administration (although I suspect much dates back to the one before that), plus doubtless a sizeable six-figure sum for other creditors.

Yep. Don't forget that he scupperd Saint Peter's plans too even though investors were scared off by his plan.

That was not quite the way you explained it to me a few weeks ago, Red? The way you DID tell it I thought actually did a lot more to explain the mess?

Your second statement is why I find it hard to answer your first.

The extent of my communication with Caisley has been a solitary email around 2001 where he gave me grief for something I posted on the old, official Bulls forum. I know you've mentioned in the past that you've met him and found him to be brash and abrasive. As such, I'd bow down to your greater knowledge of the guy, his motives and his personality, not to mention a far greater understanding of the inner workings of business and the boardroom (I've just sent my first set of accounts to HMRC - that was one seriously harrowing experience!) yet inspite of this I find it hard to believe that a person can spend 10 years in office throughout the clubs most successful period and then throw all that away in a ing contest with another board member.

I know the guy was hard to work with, could be pig headed and maybe wasn't the most astute business person Bradford will ever see, but like players I sometimes think we forget that administrators (as in people who would typically run the club and not those who may be about to liquidate it) are humans and not just names on a team sheet or year end report. There's no doubt in my mind that Chris (so named to drive home the point) would have sat down with his peers (probably his friends and family) and made a decision that was best for all the above and hopefully the club. If it turns out that he made the wrong call that should, IMO, be considered separately to his motives.

Cant say I've ever liked the bloke and the Harris signing was undoubtedy a calamity. But he does deserve credit for Bullmania and the success it brought.

Those of us that were there will remember him walking out with the Bulls flag at the Don Valley and being cheered to the rafters.

He's the Bradford Macbeth.

I think it's likely you're right that administration was going to happen but the difference between an administration where Caisley thought he'd have control of the outcome and the unholy mess we've got now is the bit I think he didn't expect.
All the major shareholders and board members have been complicit in allowing this to happen, either by their action or inaction, and none of them should ever come anywhere near the club again.

Let's all concentrate on what we are going to do in the immediate future to try and save the club rather than reliving the past . All the mistakes made, who made them and how much of our current predicament was caused by any particular decision is interesting but does not help secure a future for league in Bradford.