So from what we are saying, Hood is less of a liar, but more of an incompetant? Either way, he should be savvy enough to realise that his position is untenable in most BUlls fans' eyes. Problem is, if he's made himself personally liable by injecting cash / mortgaging his home etc..., he isnt simply going to walk away, and we are stuck with him! unless somebody buys his shareholdomg at a price that covers his liabilities.

I can see that going into Administration at this stage of the season would be much more difficult than at the end of the season. At least then there's some time to sort things out and, most importantly, start generating income from season ticket sales.

I'm still not convinced though that staying out of Administration will lead to us retaining our better young players. Even if the pledge is successful it only averts the immediate crisis. In the complete absence of any meaningful information from the Board, I would fear that we'd still have to offload Bateman, Whitehead and a few others to keep going.

Its been over 24 hours since the shock went out - here's some thoughts - not all my own - but a compilation....

They Bulls shareholding is such that no sugar daddy will be prepared to step in.

From memory - Chris Caisley owns about 25% of the shares but suspect that over 80% of the shares are owned by people no longer connected to the club.

This (if accurate) is a major stumbling block for the long term future planning.

Caisley himself has had divided loyalties over the last few years and has acted as agent for several players at the club.

Some of those players have left for pastures new, with contracts negotiated by Chris Caisley. Sam Burgess for example.

After a meeting with Hood about four years ago, he struck me as a very focussed but cautious man, intelligent but not in any way dynamic.

Maybe he is the wrong man for the job or maybe not - don't have enough knowledge to be sure.....

Events over the next couple of weeks may well prove him to be a fool or a genius....

The way is clear for a wealthy backer to come forward now.

Any such person would be worshipped by the Bulls faithful and be able to take charge of a club that has the possibilies to dwarf Huddersfield and Warrington in terms of potential support.

Changes to planning guidelines announced today will make it much easier to build retail facilities as part of an Odsal redevelopment and solve the financing problems for a new stadium.

It's not known yet what Bull owe HMRC but the image rights issue is still unresolved as far as the Bulls are concerned and they will owe some PAYE. Probably will not owe any corporation tax as it's been a while since they recorded a profit!

The Bulls are blaming the bank, in part, for their problems because the bank removed their overdraft facility. As far as anyone outside the club knows there are no outstanding loans with the bank. There must be some cash in the bank as they are still in a position to trade and zero cash plus zero income and some debt would make them technically insolvent. Hood has stated that they can only continue to trade for a couple of weeks.

The Bulls are only asking people to pledge to give £100 and if they don't hit the target and go bump you would expect them not to ask people to honour their pledges.

At a guess - what we have is a company with very little (if any) debt but no cash. They now don't have any access to credit at the bank and very little income for the remainder of the season.

On the bright side

The club owes nothing to the RFL having just paid the loan back

Owes nothing to any other club in Superleague (Leeds payments for Harris ended last season)

The ground will NOT now be sold to the highest bidder (for tipping) should the Bulls fold

This should mean that if the club enters administration and a buyer could be found who was prepared to pay a nominal amount a sympathetic view would be taken by the other clubs and the RFL.

With no bank involved and hopefully no major problem with HMRC any money paid would be used to buy out the existing shareholders.

It may then be possible to hold on to the lion's share of the playing talent and still keep membership of Superleague.

The timing of this is also interesting. Right now all clubs are committed to spending up to the cap or their own budgets so they will not be in a position to cherry pick our best players.

It is in everyone's interest for a Bradford club to carry on in Superleague so lets see what happens.

Unfortunately that's where I am too. I think the club really need to sell their business plan, why will it be a success? What's to stop us being in this situation in 6 months, all £100 plus worse off, having already tapped all the goodwill from the RL family and lost our better players anyaway?

Having spoken to a few people a lot have serious doubts and this is making them reluctant to pledge the full amount they may be able to afford. I think most will pledge something but they have serious reservations.

I think the club need to address this group rather than playing on fear without providing any concrete plans for the future. Simply saying we have a business plan moving forward isn't enough.

I'd love to know what's happening behind the scenes and if we have any genuine new backers in the pipeline!

As a lifelong Widnes Vikings fan, but first and foremost a lifelong Rugby League fan, I just wanted to offer my sympathies for the situation you find yourselves in as fans, through none of your own doing. It sounds like your board, as ours did at the time, have an awful lot to answer for!

We've been there ourselves, very recently, and I consider us very fortunate that we managed to come out of the other side, rebuild and regroup and build our club back up.

I sincerely hope that Bradford come out of this as a stronger club, in whatever form that may take, as I feel that the loss of any professional RL team would be a sad loss for the sport as a whole.

The selfish Widnes fan in me says that the best option may be administration, which may allow us the chance to capitalise on your misfortune, however the RL fan in me who wants to see this seasons SL competition continue as normal feels that it's perhaps best for the clubs immediate survival to be secured and the deeper issues addressed once we are sure that there will continue to be a club.

For this reason, I have pledged and also urged other Widnes fans to do so. I will also continue to push #savethebulls on Twitter as much as I can. @Hull_Viking


Best of luck to you, and looking forward to hammering you guys in a couple of weeks!

This is assuming a new owner, which imo is a big assumption.

How is the story stacking up? Correct me if I'm wrong, RBS have taken away £1million overdraft with immediate effect for no reason? The reason they have given and reiterated by Ryan Duckett is actually bogus. The consequences of this action will almost certainly mean administration and further losses for RBS? I've seen HMRC and banks behave extremely aggressively but I don't believe that story. Even if there is no charge on the lease there must have been reference to the lease in written exchanges, otherwise what is the overdraft secured against? The Bulls themselves say they didn't expect the RFL to take all the money from the sale so I'm guessing that they promised a significant chunk to RBS to reduce the overdraft. When it didn't arrive, they thought we're being had over.

Again, what we have is Ryan Duckett explaining one thing in public whilst in the background the story is finessed and put out through non-public channels. It's extremely irritating and causing a massive loss of trust.

This was precisely the consensus of us all at our meeting last night. We have all spoken to (or been approached by) numbers of people saying precisely that. We spent a long time debating whether Bullbuilder could act as a sort of "go-between", seeking to obtain more assurances from the club to then relay to those with reservations. Indeed, a number of members and otehrs have expressly asked that we do this. Our eventual conclusion though was that this route is fraught with potential problems, ranging from it being blamed as an excuse for people delaying pledging, to holding ourselves out to be some kind of auditor of the club's proposals! (as if they would allow that anyway).

What we ARE doing though is asking to meet the club very urgently, for a full-and frank discussion as far as is possible, to try and get some more clarification, at the least, on the sort of issues that are concerning so many fans. The sort of issues that concern me! We ought to have enough expertise, from people who have been round the block enough times in business, to get a clearer idea that it all stacks up. The likelihood is, of course, that - as with some of what various have already been told - confidentiality and commercial sensitivity comes to the fore. Which I am sure is part of the reason why the club has been circumspect about much of the background to the current situation.

I have just emailed the Lord Mayor, Ian Greenwood and my local councillors. It wouldn't do any harm if everyone did I don't think, just asking for help. www.bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/governm ... mation.htm "Dear Sirs/Madams, As no doubt you are all aware, the Bradford Bulls have a serious financial crisis and in a very real danger of going under. I am sure you will all agree that this would be almost unbelievably tragic and can not be allowed to happen. The Bulls have always been a shining light in our sometimes much maligned city and have brought positive press and pride to us on many occasions. I am writing to you to appeal for your support for the club at this present time. I urge the council to please offer help to Bradford Bulls to avoid the desperate possibility of their administration. Bradford Bulls are part of what makes this city great. Please help to keep them. Thank you for your time. Best wishes."

I have just emailed the Lord Mayor, Ian Greenwood and my local councillors. It wouldn't do any harm if everyone did I don't think, just asking for help. www.bradford.gov.uk/bmdc/governm ... mation.htm "Dear Sirs/Madams, As no doubt you are all aware, the Bradford Bulls have a serious financial crisis and in a very real danger of going under. I am sure you will all agree that this would be almost unbelievably tragic and can not be allowed to happen. The Bulls have always been a shining light in our sometimes much maligned city and have brought positive press and pride to us on many occasions. I am writing to you to appeal for your support for the club at this present time. I urge the council to please offer help to Bradford Bulls to avoid the desperate possibility of their administration. Bradford Bulls are part of what makes this city great. Please help to keep them. Thank you for your time. Best wishes."

Is that the one that that plays along to "run with the bulls"

There comes a time when survival and pragmatism trumps everything else.

I have this horrible vision of people standing around in the wreckage of the club saying - "well at least we kept confidential everything that was commercially sensitive"...

RBS have not taken away a £1m overdraft. The facility was nowhere anywhere near that. I have not personally beenn told the number, but I know a man who has. The Bulls asked for a small increase (again I know a man who knows how much), which seemingly triggered a credit review. The outcome was as stated.

I expect that the Bulls had received the stadium settlement from the RFL, meaning they had received funds that RBS saw they could effectively "grab" as a one-off opportunity to get out of their exposure. I have seen it happen any number of times before with banks - they dare not foreclose because they would take a hit, but the minute the customer receives a big receipt they immediately reduce the facility and threrby theri exposure. I suspect (although I do not know) that that is what happened in this case.

I have already explained why, IMO, the lease itself was of little value to a secured lender in the event of insolvency. I stand by that, and await anyone putting up a better counter-argument. The bank has a long-standing charge on all the assets - like the Coral Stand, the debtors, the fixtures and fittings, and so on as well as any intangibles that might have value that would survive in an insolvency.

The requirement to repay the loan early clearly put a huge dent in the cash flow. I suspect this is what has led to the tax liabilities not being paid (again, I am surmising albeit with some substance) and I suspect that the existence of the unpaid tax liabilities may then have given the bank more of a reason/excuse to seemingly take the opportunity to cut and run when they did. If that is the case, the domino effect started with having to repay the loan earlier (as I understand it, we are tyalking MUCH earlier) than expected, I'd suggest? Why that came about, how much it flew in the face of any previous assurances, and whether it could have been foreseen, is perhaps the most significant unanswered question of all IMO.

Why don't you ring Ryan (or even Hood) and ask him if he can put you a bit more in the picture, and form your own views? I did.

His number was on the flyer, and I know you are not the sort of person (as some others are) who would refrain from seeking the facts in case they were at variance with what you have convinced yourself must be the case. At least then, you could form your own view about how truthful the overall story is, rather than listening to the comments of others?

..standing next to those saying "...there was no way I was going to pay anything while that lying toerag Hood was in charge, and you can see where his mismanagement got us..."

There will be commercially sensitive matters, the disclosure of which could damage the prospects of securing a successful outcome. I've an inkling of one or two such.

Equally, the club should surely be unequivocally aware by now that there is a significant body of opinion that believes they have been misled and the facts as presented do not stack up. I really really hope theyb take this on board bloody quickly and seek to allay those concerns. Like NOW. And, in particular, I am extremely disappointed that Hood seems to have left all this to Ryan - it is HIS explanations that people want to hear, and if a mea culpa is indeed required then it is from HIM they want to hear it!

I would like a simple time line of events. from the club, not peiced together by several sources.

how did we get in to debt with the RFL. what, other than the stadium sale, was in place to extract themselves from the mire? how much tax is owed? how quickly do RBS enforce a reduced overdraft facility?
how much has hood and other board members put in to the coffers in the last year?

all of this would be available to any person interested in buying into the club during the due dilligence period of their offer, and alkthough it might scare some suppliers / service providers, it might just prove refreshingly honest and not get a negative response!

if i get something resembling frank answers about this, including Hood stating that he misjudged the whole of the situation, and inadvertantly misled the fans, then he gets my support in terms of a pledge. he appears to be a second rate salesman / politician, making his underlings take the flack. he is entitled to do this, but if he doesnt get that many of us dont trust him, then he is even more daft than i thought.

It is my fervent wish that from this point the club will realise how much more support they will receive from fans if they are as transparent as possible, even if that means publishing the minutes. Redacted if necessary for concerns of commercial sensitivity, but truthful, honest and open.

It might be a pipe dream, but they cannot now claim they do not owe us the whole truth at each and every point while they remain in charge.