I think Highlander was saying that to avoid clubs taking the route of adminsitration to clear accumulated debts they decided to penalise any club going into administration a years Sky money on top of a points deduction.

I cannot imagine any of our upstanding clubs trying such a ploy, it is almost as silly as suggesting the Chancellor and BoE were colluding to push up inflation to reduce the deficit?

But surely this strategy of punishing a club for going into administration by punishing the person who gets it out of the mess is misguided? In our case the punishment is meted out to those who had nothing to do with going into admin in the first place.

It’s like if I got caught speeding, my car gets taken off me by the police and sold and the new owner of my car gets the fine!

If Caisley had taken over I could partly understand this as he was party to many of the decisions that led to the downfall of the old club and was the major shareholder. But this didn't happen.

It just makes me all the more suspicious that certain clubs (not all) would like to see us out of the picture completely and are engineering a situation that they can benefit from.

Agreed, and also the basic argument is based on a false premise; namely that Old Bulls had an unfair advantage, because what they should have been paying on debts/tax/VAT etc they supposedly were spending on the team. Well, given that we haven't qualified for the playoffs since about 1572 then it's not easy to see just what the advantage was!

So what is to stop teams repeatedly going into admin & just handing over to a white knight completely debt free? It is the club, not OK personally, who gets the fine. If he chooses one of his companies to pay the fine that's his business. No-one has yet answered my questions - did Ok offer or agree to the forfeit as a condition & did it enable Bradford to keep their squad?

The fact it was agreed to is well known TT, and I'm sure you know that already as it's been mentioned enough times on this board.

It still doesn't answer point about bringing in this new and quite heavy 'fine', C £1.2m and is a lot of dosh, whilst at the same time keeping stum that the way the league would deal with relegation was changing to one where not having sufficient funds was going to make it very difficult to sustain the status just re-gained, seems a tad unethicial; indeed it could be argued that Omar Khan was sold the club under false pretenses.

Maybe the "loose a years Sky money" sanction was put in place to deter pre-pack administration where the existing owners manage to buy back the operation sans debt. I this case an unconnected person - OK came to the rescue and was subject to the "fine" to keep the SL status. The other chairman then decided to pocket the windfall and also change the rules on entry to the "SL club" but I assume OK would have been involved in the decision on the new structure which was made recently - though the potential cut in the number of clubs has been trailed for some time.

Joe,you idiot

Not actually sure that losing competition money was ever actually put in place; losing points [4 being the previous highest IIRC] yes, but not losing money. That appears to have been a special, new punishment for us. Maybe the next club which has to go through what we did will get an even bigger 'fine', who knows with policy made up on the hoof. I don't think it's too far fetched to imagine that the next 'white knight' may well look at what happened in our case and say, "I don't think I'll bother, if that's all the 'help' we'll get".

I think the potential cut in numbers has indeed been on the cards a while, but certainly not they way that cut was going to be decided. In any case, whilst I've no idea how the club voted it was only 1 in 14, so a vote against would have been unlikely to have stopped it being passed.

You get the feeling that narrow minded self interest is the main driver for the clubs and most of them probably took the view - we will stay up so more money for us. Most of the comments seem to be supportive with only London expressing unease (cannot imagine why).

Perhaps the restructuring proposals are too timid and they should have gone for a regional super dopper league to raise the standard and intensity of the game's premier offering to pull in more national sponsorship/TV cash , but on the proviso that a % of the revenue went back into supporting the existing clubs

I think a regional [and smaller] 'super league' would definitely raise standards but would have the opposite effect on sponsorship and TV cash. Being, or trying to appear, a national competition is going to sell more Sky dishes and products in general than a York/Lancs league - however super duper.

Yorkshire (1st obviously!), Lancashire, Cumbria, London, Wales and the Basques - like the IPL in cricket, maybe Scotland and Ireland. I will change my login to the Northernradicalrelic - though the intellegence services might put me under watch

What makes you think we're not already being watched..............



[sizeI'll stick the word bomb in here to see if it elicits a response, if you don't hear from me for a while check the newspapers and give my MP a ring, if you don't mind, as I may be 'care of Guantanamo Bay'..[/size

Exactly.

Actually I didn't. I haven't read every post on this thread but none that I have read mention it. They are mostly accusations of cruelty & moral corruption against the obviously incompetent RFL. I read about it on the VT thread yesterday.

If OK was unaware of the discussions he hadn't done adequate research.