Ah is this straight out of the Wakey book for surviving by any chance??

That was PH's stance at the time. To be honest, I wouldn't doubt that a judgement which left us paying the full claim, C £3.25m IIRC, would have left us in excrement valley without any obvious implement to be used as a means of extrication. Just how likely such a judgement would have been though, is something I'm not even qualified to hazard a guess about, in truth.

there was never any chance of it being £3.25M. Harris was required to sign for one year for them, one look at the accounts for that year without him shows that Leeds did not lose £3.25m, nor would they ever had made £3.25m, even before you take into account what they would have had to pay Harris, and all the other offsetting costs. and then theres the question of how much of that £3.25 was legal fees, which are massive if a claim does go to court. So as Adey says, the costs of fighting to get the £3.25m reduced to a sensible figure were far more than conceding and settling for an amount that kept the club going. and Leeds happily settled for much less. As for who is responsible, an organisation is lead from the top, so Caisley was responsible.

Interests in two different RL clubs was included in the post above in the list of reasons for a person being unfit, ie conflict of interest. It may simply be that the RFL see Caisleys player management activities, specifically Bradford players, as a similar conflict of interest, that make him unfit. which would be a very different reason from a lot of the others on that list, more inappropriate than unfit. And may explain the consultancy idea, where the brief would be carefully defined to exclude any conflict of interest.

From memory the figure of £3.23m was solely the claim for damages and legal expenses would have been over an above that figure.

I'm pretty sure that Caisley had gone and Hood would have been chairman when the case was finally settled, so responsibility for the final figure and the settlement in general would rest with PH, imo. Though there is no doubt who was the author of the whole business.

I agree about the conflict of interest. I guess that being an agent pays reasonably well and I can well understand CC might not want to give it up, which might explain his reluctance to join the board. For what it's worth, I've always felt his position as major shareholder is little short of being a direct conflict of interest when he represents players at Bradford. Being on the board doesn't really make it much worse to be honest.

The 3.2million figure was only ever quoted by one person who's now been shown not to be fully accurate with what he's told us so before so it may best taking it with a very large pinch of salt.

I am quite satisfied that was the figure. It was never refuted, and I have been told the figure by other people who I would trust.

Various people claiming to be in the know at Leeds alleged that Leeds had signed statements from people confirming the massive amounts of new sponsorship or whatever they were all ready and willing to provide as soon as Harris returned. Supposedly.

in that case the claim was even more ridiculous in the context of Leeds settling for circa £350K for damages and their legal costs for the settlement. Leeds would never have been able to quantify such an amount. and I think it was as much Leeds knowing they could not make that amount stick as us not having the money anyway made it an easy one. £350k in the bank over 3 years is worth a lot more than a judgement for £3.25 m against a bankrupt business.

I believe the figure Adey says, if you are going to make a claim you put your best foot forward knowing its going to hacked back so pump it up for starters. Harris had only to sign for one year, so sponsorship of 3.25 million for one year, no chance. It would be sponsorship of the club, not Harris, so they would only be able to claim the incremental sponsorship over and above a normal level, not all the sponsorship money. or to put it another way, the amount of sponsorship with Harris minus the amount of sponsorship without. I think we would know about a £3.25m loss at Leeds. So Hood imo sorted Caisleys mess out pretty well, so you would have thought that Caisley would have been amenable to reciprocate, by sorting out the mess the Awford signing has caused.

Hood was on the Board from 1999. It was just as much his mess as Caisleys. If he didnt agree with the signing he should have resigned.

Yes, he had corporate responsibility. As did Mr Agar and Mr Coulby too, of course, and Mr Bates (can't remember when Mark Minton resigned).

But it also presupposes that the board were made aware of all relevant facts, which only they know if they were or not. It further assumes that the board should not have trusted their in-house, very experienced senior lawyer but should have sought separate legal advice regarding the signing (assuming of course that they did, and therefore they did trust him, and therefore did not). It would be a very brave layman to dispute the professional opinions of a senior lawyer, I suggest, if they DID rely on his judgment or assurances (and, I stress, only those sat round the boardroom table will know whether, and to what extent, they actually did).

Mr Caisley is an extremely forceful and persuasive gentleman. He certainly persuaded me, with his comments at the time, that all was well with the signing -which led to me making a serious fool of myself when it transpired that that was far from being the case, and I had been fighting the corner of a lost argument. We will probably never know what assurances (if any) he gave the board, and whether any questions were raised by other directors and if so how they were addressed, but - in the absence of such key information - your statement is too simplistic IMO.

I'd agree entirely with the first part of your post and would suggest that CC probably bore much more responsibility for the signing than anyone else. He was Chair, largest shareholder, effectively de facto CEO and in house lawyer.

With regards to the second part I'm less convinced than ever that the information coming from various sources is likely to be either true or the whole story. You're of the view that CC refused to enter court and support the statements he made both to you privately and in public. I'd love to hear precisely what happened.

So would I mate, so would I. About that and a load of other things.

So, like pretty well everyone else, I can only speculate (and he never made any statements to me privately, btw - I could only go on what is in the public domain) and try and form a view based on whatever limited information is available - so much of it circumstantial or impossible to verify or disprove.

I doubt we ever will get to know the truth of it all, though

All I can hope is that all people learn from past mistakes.

Why are you refusing to believe what Adey has said re CC refusing to give edvidence is not fact? I was also given that information by two different Directors (not the recent lot either) prior to 2010, others have also come on here and said so from their own sources. The trouble is the Bulls and Rhinos are legally bound not to speak about it publically so clarification is difficult but I feel its true in this case.
The other problem CC landed the Bulls with, was his insisting that Harris's Image rights were beyond the S C interpretation, Sod Hall begged to differ and the Bulls along with the Pies coped S C breachs 2 years on the trot!

For the avoidance of doubt, I have no evidence one way or the other regarding why the Bulls capitulated. I HAVE been told it was because the club was facing an existential crisis, and the board was increasingly advised that the risks of continuing to defend the action were too high. Indeed, that was the line only a few weeks ago. Any comments about just why we ended up in that situation had to be hearsay, especially given the confidentiality surrounding the whole proceedings.

I've said before that I was gobsmacked when the club conceded, because we had been led to believe - by both administrations - that the club's position was strong. Losing the preliminary hearing was a shock to me, because - on reading Mr Justice Gray's Decision, which I said at the time made perfect sense to me - it seemed clear there was rather more to the contractual suituation between Harris and Leeds than we had hitherto been led to believe. I could perhaps understand why Mr Caisley had argued that the contracts were a restraint of trade, and therefore not enforeceable, but I could also fully understand why Judge Gray decided that the restraint of trade was valid in the circumstances. It seemed to me at the time that the club would only have proceeded with the signing if they were unaware of the existence of all the interlocking agreements, since surely with sight of them all a prudent lawyer could have concluded the same as judge Gray? As to do otherwise could either have been anywhere from imprudent to beyond reckless, or the club had received bad external advice which would surely have led to an action for negligence against the advisors? So I was uneasy but not panicking.

Then we had the Mainstream Developments HoL ruling, which seemed to me to rule out a sussessful action for damages from Leeds, since - if I understood that ruling correctly - an action could only succeed if the defendant's intention in interfering in a contract was to cause financial harm to the other party. Which of course had to be ludicrous in this case (and I still can't see it being other than that, even with what we know now).

And yet, then we conceded. Despite the HoL ruling thats seemed to me to provide a stromg defence.

To this day, I do not know precisely why we did, beyond the generalities of "risk was too high". All I could conclude, in the absence of anything more concrete, was that the club's advisors were concerned that Leeds could argue that the signing WAS done with the intent of causing Leeds financial harm. Which, incidentally, I definitely do NOT believe can have been the intent! And the only way I deemed Leeds might be able to argue that was if the club had been made aware of the existence and nature of all the agreements before we signed Harris, and yet we went ahead regardless. If the club was clear that it was not aware of all the agreements between leeds and Harris, then surely (I reasoned) we mcut still have a strong case.

And yet we conceded. So I deduced that maybe it was far from clear what the club was and was not aware of at the time of signing. And maybe it was also unclear the extent to which the various parties involved woul be prepared to swear to the facts under oath, since clearly both sides could not be telling the facts as they were?

That was - and remains - my reasoning for why we conceded. Because nothing else makes sense based on what we know. Obvioulsy, if there are additional material facts that we are unaware of, then all bets are off anyway.

So, if my deduction is anywhere close, I guess you get down to who said what to whom and who gave what to whom and who took advice from whom...? And I suppose once that sort of uncertainty creeps in - and faced with a monied opponent that seemed intent on getting even - then the risks of defending start to look to be too high?

Well, because it's not fact as Adey has so eloquently explained. Indeed he has always presented this as a well reasoned hypothesis based upon the evidence he had available. So, the variable is whether CC knew of the interlocking agreements. Whilst it is a key piece of information I don't think this gives us enough evidence to state a causal link between CC's knowledge, or lack of, his alleged refusal to enter court and testify, and the Bulls eventual capitulation.

In his letter to the T and A CC said that Peter Hood told him the Harris deal with Leeds was covered by an increase in TV income. Adey's hypothesis suggests there was more to this conversation (or series of conversations) wherein CC was asked to support the Bulls case in court and he refused. Whilst there's an undoubted logic to it, this is still the key 'unknown'.

He may have refused because he realised there was no point going to court, as even if we won the cost of doing so would finish the club. So better to settle for an affordable amount than cut off your nose to spite your face. Whether it was Hood or Caisley that settled is irrelevent, the important thing is they did, for aprox 10% of Leeds claim, payable over 3 years. but its water under the bridge. What is more important is whether Caisley is going to put up the cash and how long that is going to take. Players and staffs salaries are being paid today according to the TnA, and the review continues, so fine for the moment thanks to the fans.