I think it's the one armed man on the grassy knoll.

The man from Mongo has been a good friend to Cha-low.

This is no conspiracy theory, but a straightforward answer to your straightforward question. I don't know, and am unlikely to ever find out, but whatever else, the Bulls being in the Champ this season saved the RFL a whole shedload of grief. Fact.

Was that enough to merit helping keep us afloat? Maybe it was. What is NOT a theory but is a fact, this decision most certainly didn't do us any favours. Many peoples' worst fears about it seem to be being realised, and the likelihood of disaster was not that hard to predict. Have the RFL got form for sticking the knife in to the Bulls? Well, yes. We were on the point of folding, on the last day, OK agreed to take the club on, and at the eleventh hour the RFL suddenly moved the goalposts massively and insisted on confiscating one year's funding. Again, simple fact. And people have said OK was 'foolish' or whatever to agree to that - but another simple fact is, had he not done so, then the club would have closed down then and there. Which was essentially why he signed. The RFL would have thus signed our death warrant on that fateful evening so don;t anyone tell me they wouldn't do it, they clearly were fully ready to do it.

Add to that the farrago when OK did a deal to sell his shares to Moore & Co., but they then refused to pay. Story was that someone from the RFL had told them they didn't have to. I have no knowledge of if that's true but then again we heard recently that even this season the RFL had apparently helped themselves to was it 100K of our pittance of funding to pay the former company's "rugby debts".

And were the RFL instrumental in us ending up with owners that don't show any sign of putting in the sort of money which could have saved us?

Like I say I'm certainly no conspiracy theorist but my personal impression is that we've been getting a good kicking for a while now. And whatever else, none of this is inconsistent with what I was told.

Odsal is clearly worth a lot of money for whatever reason. I mean, if it wasn't, why would Green make persistent efforts to buy it? Why would the RFL buy the lease? Circling predators? But there would not be any predators circling or otherwise unless there was a tasty large meal in the offing so to me that just reinforces the firm belief that Odsal is a lucrative target, and all the more so when the rugby covenant shorty expires.

But the rugby 'covenant' doesn't expire, FA. All that expires is the pay-back clause under the Odsal Settlement agreement - the 'covenant', if it exists at all, is just down to the council and whatever decision they come up with. The RFL are leasing a rugby ground and, as it is, presumably have to hand back a 'rugby ground', at the end of their tenancy.

I confess to knowing little of legalities, where as I'm certain you do, but I'd have thought that, unless the terms of the lease say otherwise, the freeholder would have a pretty big say in what "permanent" changes can be made to the ground?

If Koukash is financing them and in turn the Bulls, what's the motive - altruism, a way of owning two clubs, a loan with interest or something altogether more worrying like a merger?

That's my theory if there's anything in it.

Another Shuddersfield or maybe a Gateshull?

I have two questions - my apologies if they have already being discussed -
1. If the RFL have withheld funding from a different company to pay off debts from a new one does that mean we have paid off some of our debtors and thus the 12 points for paying off creditors is a little more harsh? Surely if other creditors are being penalised and small businesses going under due to the old companies dealings is this not why we got 12 points because we did not pay our debts off? So how can they justify penalising a new company to make amends for a different one?

2. If this is the case and the administration and debtors are lodged would this be classed as an unfair advantage to creditors if some are paid differently? is this legal? surely a review may say that all creditors should have received an equal amount of this 100k windfall not just a chosen few?

May sound dumb but as per usual with the bulls and the RFL involvement in administration some things just never add up.

With Robbie Paul now involved at Salford (albeit a consultant) and the Salford staff now over at the Bulls, that's the picture emerging for me too

The Red Bulls anyone?

I'll need a lot of vodka to swallow that. Then again, once this season tickets expired I am done. All enjoyment of RL has been finally destroyed this year....

Right, back to the IOM TT. Go Dean Harrison!!!!! A rare Bradford success story.

Meanwhile what? Do we go and watch a doomed team head for relegation? If there is a plan behind the scenes it makes this season rather academic. If no big changes come until 2019 it makes next year academic too. Is Marwan or whoever likely to want to keep us above water in C1 playing in front of 500 fans?

Would he want to subsidise a team shorn of any remaining talent, in a money pit stadium, with most fans walking away (when he's p1ssed at the Salford attendances) with a mountain to climb to get any good will back?

He was my maths lecturer at Liverpool Poly and he's not bad at the old adding up malarky he'l know the only way to save the place would be to do a Toronto in L1. No-one wanted to throw that kind of cash at us in SL. I'd seriously doubt there's now a volunteer to do it in the Chip Shop league.

Unless of course the lease will pass to Koukash's name....

The land & the lease are both supposed to have significant value. Estimates of value have not been made public yet I don't think. But obviously the RFL and the council both want part of the windfall. And neither seem keen to put in the cash primer needed to release the value. The mythical 3rd partner would obviously want a return on his cash as well. And those percentages I would assume are the sticking point.
Bradford Bulls are merely an afterthought.

If the merger went ahaed we could have the Brad from Bradford and the Ford from Salford and call ourselves BradFord

Genius!

Our neighbors wouldn't like it - how would they cope changing the FUD to Ford? it would take an enormous amount of campaigning to attract the fans existing and recently left and for the parochial traditionalists to recognize our new club as a separate entity!