the fine was to buy a 2 year SL licence

I really hope that you manage to beat the drop this season. Bradford has long been my favourite away ground.

I'm not really interested in the way the club has been managed. It's always the players and fans that suffer. And Bradford Bulls has been one of the great teams in Super League as we know, so it's doubly sad to see what's happening.

Here's hoping that the fans can get behind the team for the season now that you know you've effectively got to beat Wakey by six points. I recall the game at Wigan two seasons ago when you adopted a mentality to win against the odds and I suppose you have got 25 games to try to adopt the same spirit.

Best of luck.

Fickle maybe! Tired and disillusioned most definitely! If and when the "Fat Lady Sings" I'll also cancel my Sky Sports Subscription and replace it with a cheaper Premier Sports one, I can then watch "Rugby other than the Bulls" NRL and the Motor Sports Sky no longer include. I'll no doubt miss the days out and social aspects of supporting the Bulls. I'll fill that gap with an extra holiday! Unless somebody does ride in and save us, again!

I think we all just want some closure now. It's like watching the death throes of a loved one, they keep flickering back into life but you know it's the cat's knackers.

Is it not in BB2014s best interest to anul these contracts for the players?
They have no income without the club, so i assume cannot afford to pay the wages for any length of time of their new employees.
Is another bit of covert dealing going on while the rfl are paying this months wages to right this most alarming of errors.

www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... on_by_RFL/

www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/s ... on_by_RFL/

I don't know Lamb but the article talks sense, if a genuine bloke I hope he is your saviour because you have the opportunities to be a big club again but do it honorably.

No it wasn't. There have been many examples of RL clubs (note - RL not SL) having their central funding withheld when they entered administration or CVA conditions. Workington, Keighley and Oldham are 3 examples. I'm a Workington supporter - when we entered our CVA after being relegated from SL we did not receive any RFL central funding for almost 2 years until we exited the CVA. Bradford may be the first SL club to suffer such a punishment but they are most certainly not the first RL club to do so. The values may be different but the principle is the same.

For me that's simple to understand. The bulls were given money to secure odsal direct from the RFL. The other clubs did not receive the same. Rightly they were a bit miffed by this- but probably more miffed that the truth wasn't told initially. This was the RFLs way of keeping the peace.
Wasn't their best idea but then they'd got themselves in a hole (no pun intended)
The RFL probably expected the new owners to run the club sensibly and reduce the wage bill to something they could afford. But Bradford thought they were above selling their players. They asked players to take wage cuts then are extending contracts. And their chairman could be heard bragging a few weeks ago at a rugby club in Huddersfield about how much money he's brought in in sponsorship so that the new bulls shirt looks like a cycling shirt with all the sponsors on it and it was probably the most expensive in SL. ......

There some ill informed apologistas who continue to pretend that the Bulls were fined 1 yr sky money. Laughable. SL clubs were sick of the assistance given to the Bulls via huge advances and the purchase of Odsal (without any consultation of SL clubs). They wanted the Bulls excluded. You may remember at the time a last minute mini licensing process was highlighted by the RFL - this was because the Bulls exit was on the agenda. Furthermore there was a formal vote by SL clubs as to whether SL would stay with 14 clubs (reported in the press). The inclination was for 13 clubs. However OK offered to pass on 1 yr sky money if Bulls could stay in SL. On that basis the SL clubs voted to stay with 14 clubs inc the Bulls.
The keeping of 1 yr sky money is not in RFLs punishments, it was OKs offer. It was SLE and RFL that suggested the Bulls should spread the cut over 2 years.

The distribution of sky money among the clubs in SL AND the RFL is standard practice.

Pay no heed to those talking about confiscation or fines. They are wrong and should be asking OK and Sutcliffe why they made such an offer.

Indeed, and with this latest debarcle at least any notion of rfl favourtism can be killed stone dead. At the moment if we get to the end of the season solvent and in 12th it would be a miracle and would probaly feel better than a cup win.......last game of the 2014 season....away to London, 13th September, could be quite an away trip for one reason or another (assuming we get that far)

Actually, if no one plays there the RFL would lose their lease as one of the provisions is that [I believe it is specifically Bulls/Northern] play there for the majority of the season.

Some people think the Bulls could be run sustainably in the Championship. In an ideal world that’s a possibility but things at the moment make that possibility very unlikely IMO.

Someone would have to take on the current basket case with all the creditors and conditions imposed by the RFL (unless they had the money to settle everything immediately which is about as unlikely as it gets). They’d have to finance the rest of the SL campaign which if it led to relegation even with a parachute payment means a totally new set of circumstances.

The club is tied into Odsal until 2017. Could it afford the rent and the maintenance required given the fact that income would drop massively? Odsal is a huge financial millstone and has been one of the many reasons the SL club has ended up where it is. It costs a fortune to maintain and doesn’t have the facilities to attract sponsors or keep fans in comfort. Iconic it may have been in 1954 but less so now.

It’s a fact of life that if the club played in the Championship fans would drift away, it’s happened to all clubs that have been relegated.

The club had 324 paying spectators when it went bust from the bottom of the RL in 1963. That was in an era when there was less competition for people’s leisure time. Nowadays I think the club would head for oblivion much quicker. Fact is that professional RL in Bradford isn’t sustainable at any level while we’re at Odsal IMO. However, a move to VP wouldn’t solve anything given that the last time this happened crowds dropped by the thousands and that was in our most successful era. What the club needs is a modern ground along the lines of the Halliwell Jones in the south Bradford area. It’ll never happen though (it nearly did in 2001/2 but that’s another story, thanks to Stephen Byers).

99% of RL clubs make losses and aren’t sustainable. All the successful clubs rely on a big money backer prepared to make a loss and have a nice fancy new ground with low running costs and nice corporate facilities. See Hudders, Warrington, St Helens, Hull, Wigan etc. Only Leeds make a profit, and that’s by virtue of the fact that they are in Leeds and have had the security of Paul Caddick guaranteeing their million pound debts debts while they put a plan in place back in 97/98. How we could do with a Caddick now.

Lamb may talk a good game but unless he’s got money to burn I suspect it’ll end in tears or not even get off the ground.

The whole saga has left a bad taste. Successive club owners have lied to the fans. The club had been mismanaged from about 2002/3 with Odsal bleeding the club dry, add to that the Harris saga, then the disastrous period of McNamara in charge leading to the club’s fortunes on the field declining despite spending the full cap, all against a backdrop of the economic downturn.

The deal for the RFL to get the Odsal lease as payment for a massive loan shows what a state the club was in by 2012. How did the RFL think they could get away with that? The subsequent vote to deprive the club of TV money as a punishment made the newclub a basket case from day 1 last year. Only an idiot would’ve taken the club on and OK did and it was a predictable end. No SL club was sustainable on half the money and that remains the case.

Meanwhile we have narcissistic, self-aggrandising “fans” of other clubs holding forth on here like their clubs are holier than thou when they’ve all had similar troubles at their clubs or would if the sugar daddies departed. It just shows what a parochial, selfish, tinpot sport RL in England is.

The point the poster also highlighted could be seen in totally the opposite way.
i.e not that it would seem strange that the rfl would want you to fail, butthat they had a vested interest in seeing you succeed, as many RL supporters have been saying for a long while especially us living hand to mouth as another poster pointed out (the irony!!)