Quote Ferocious Aardvark="Ferocious Aardvark"Well, the whole thing is a bit of a mystery to me. I can't find any procedure laid down anywhere for such an "appeal" so can't comment on the basis.
If the basis is some sort of "there was no alternative to administration" argument - why would that help? I mean, as it happens, our new owner ended up being the same guy as appointed the administrator but that, surely, is a one-off extraordinary situation, and whilst the history is I'm sure fascinating, I'm not sure what alternatives he felt he had whilst wearing his original hat as a creditor is relevant to the current owner.
My take on it is that the arguments may have been misreported. If not, then I don't immediately see how the circumstance that a debenture holder had to appoint an administrator to protect his debenture else HMRC would liquidate is relevant to league points. If someone wants to explain how it is, I am eager to learn. The statement on the RFL's own site says:
The circumstances (that HMRC would issue a winding up petition if payments due were not made) seem far from unforeseeable to me. They were also entirely avoidable, had the club simply paid what it owed to HMRC.
I can see how a business that was put into admin to protect it temporarily from creditors, but then emerged from admin having achieved that, and made arrangements to pay the creditors in full or to a significant degree, eg by way of a CVA, I can see how that would be relevant. But that's not what happened here.
All I can see is that all the noises ever coming out of Red Hall in relation to deduction of league points seem to major on the extent to which creditors are paid off. And that at least makes sense to me. Somewhere there is a Policy on how the RFL will look to apply sanctions following an insolvency event. Anyone got a link to that? It may shed further light.'"
I actually think that Bradford will get some points back, not because of any moral or legal imperative but because of the clusterfsk which was made of the whole process by pretty much everyone involved.
Originally Bradford went in to admin and were put in to admin to protect them from a winding up order from HMRC which apparently wasn’t paid because of the transfer of ownership from Mr Kahn to BB2014. The RFL were pretty clear that the punishment is for going INTO admin. All the nonsense that happened after that becomes a little irrelevant. The argument Marc Green can make is that HE put Bradford in to admin not to avoid debts but to settle the ownership dispute as we were originally told.
The fact that the BB2014 guys then pulled out and Green then went on to takeover the bulls is a little irrelevant, if not only because the punishment had already been applied at that point and nothing Marc Green could have done would altered what had happened. The RFL may have decided to give some points back has he paid off all debts (as was speculated) but that would have been points being returned, not points having not been taken.
Personally I think it just highlights the complete idiocy of the situation and the idea that you should punish a club for going in to admin when everyone involved in that has at that point been removed from the club.
