Another one who confuses club and company.

Long-established club with very rich history.

Owned by a brand new company.

Did London start again at the bottom?

Did Wakefield? (either time?)

I Keep reading the same comment over and over again - best interests of the game

irrelevant of what happens to the bulls etc surly what is in the best interests of the game is to have a crediable governing body.

What ever decision is reached the whole fiasco needs to be a wake up call to the RFL to govern the sport in the interest of all its members not a few in the elite league.

Simply keeping bulls in SL becuase they get an artificially inflated gate attendance (due to low unsustainable prices) and becuase they have rich "history" is not acting in the interests off all. IF BB stay in SL it must be for somthing such as a good youth policy etc which benefits the game and this needs to be made public simply to restore faith in the governing body.

There is no point in arguing with these people who want to see the Bulls kicked out of SL. They pretend that they are the upholders of justice and fair play, but really they have no interest in justice at all. They are almost all supporters of other clubs who after the inception of SL feel that they have been treated unjustly by the powers that be. They were revelling in the possibility of the demise of the club, but now that has been averted they want the next best thing which is relegation at all costs, regardless of the damage this will cause. It's strange that most of them come from Wakefield, Keighley and Halifax. Jealous of previous success i think?

What a load of bollox.

They are all fine, upstanding burghers of their respective boroughs whose only, whose sole and untainted interest in the whole affair is to see absolute fair play and the highest moral standards of behaviour.

How could you possibly dare to impugn their honour and integrity by assigning to them such bitter and self-interested motives? Have you no shame? It is, after all, clear to all the world just how their collective integrity and honesty shines out, like a wonderful beacon of hope in this cynical and self-interested world. I am sure I can join with the vast majority of responsible posters on this site in disowning your disgraceful allegations, and assuring our visitors that we fully appreciate that they are speaking with the best interests of the game at heart, and at no stage have they even paused to consider the situation from their own perspective. And we are totally satisfied are regards the purity and genuineness of their intent.

For shame, sir!


[sizeHang on...did you say Wakey, Keighley and Halifax...?[/size

as a wire fan and a love for the greatest game of all i think it would be tragic for bradford to be thrown out of the league
for 1 whoever gets there spot will be whipping boys like crusaders was never should of happened
for 2 i remember going to odsal and i hated it as i knew we had no chance of beating them but i think its 1 of the best grounds in the league even more so when the suns out its not the newest all seater multimillion pound ground but its got something about it
for 3 they have potential to be the best again with a new backer if he loves the club they will do well look at us wen we was at wilderspool another great ground absolute dive but had something about it we was on the verge of relegation and had no funds as we made some shocking signings and bad decisions we was lucky to have mr moran lets hope mr khan will do the same for you
so in my opinion YES bradford should be in the super league where they deserve to be a great club with history of being the best and should this be took away from other fans of the sport like myself NO
in the words of the thousands and thousands of bulls supporters ive heard since super league started
COME ON U BULLLS

I would accept that due to Bulls being transferred to a new then they should start in a lower devision, like rangers.

However Rangers applied to join the SPL but the other clubs voted against letting them in so they where put in the lowest devsion, so would the power lay witht he RFL or the clubs which would make a huge difference and then the RFL could not be accused of favouritism like they are now.

Also as the SL is a licence format not PromReg then the Bulls newco application should be viewed just as that, a new business plan set forward by the owners to show they are up to SL standard as we keep being told by other fans that the old club no longer exists and we have no history now blah, blah, blah, so they should be viewed as new in that the application should have no views that it is the same Bulls application attached to it which would hinder the assesment and so if that plan is then deemed better and more beneficial to the SL than those of the other clubs i cant se the problem.

BUT if the SL was once again PromReg then Bulls should be put in a lower league and another team come up instead

I was talking before the mess started. And I mean the long term mess.

I wish I had come heir to one of these season tickets that had been "given away". Mine cost me £127, compared with (IIRC) £197 last time before the price pledge thingie came in. and I was so pleased with the price that I bought two, when at full price I would only have bought one. SO the club actually received more from me than they would have had the price been higher.

I realise now I should just have gone to Halifax or Keighley or Wakefield or Leigh to pick up a couple of these ones that were being given away, since they all seem to know how I could have got hold of them.

No London didn't get kicked out, but we know they were never going to be either given how much of the "expansion" of the game that they represent.

As for Wakefield, the company that went into Administration last year was incorporated in 1991. The "first" time you refer to was a CVA agreed by the creditors of the company without a formal insolvency taking effect. We all know what eventually happened last year, but let's also remember that if they'd been kicked out of SL immediately there wouldn't have been the opportunity for a replacement club to recruit a suitable squad before the start of the season.

Wakefield then entered the new franchising process in the knowledge that the Administration would be a black mark on their application. I suspect we'll never know the whole truth as to whether it was Wakefield or another club that were saved by the Crusaders withdrawing their franchise application. Regardless of that, I think that their progress this year shows that the application must have been reasonably robust.

As for the fate of the Bulls, I think that if the rest of the clubs want a 14 team league then the Bulls will keep their place until at least 2014. Given the size of the Bulls' debt compared to Wakefield's this may well be a problem in 2014, but a lot can happen between now & then.

so applying Wakefield logic, what we should have done is gone into liquidation in February, to ensure that nobody else could take our place!

I'm glad our neighbours in Wakefield have kept the moral high ground on that one!

IMO. If there was a straight promotion/relegation between the divisions, we should lose our place in SL and start at the lowest professional RFL governed level.

SL is a closed shop. the people who own the other 13 clubs realise that Bradford's fans are an asset to the whole league.

If we turn this around, this could be a watershed moment for the game as a whole. Some of the stuff Eamonn McManus has come out with show that Sl is not viable unless clubs have wealthy backers. Not sponsors, or other sources of income, but backers giving money to a bottomless pit that they have no hope of getting back (unless they are directors of a web design/hosting company that inflates charges to uphold their claim that they never take a penny out of the club!). This culture has to change!

our game was founded so that players could be given fair money for broken time. we now pay our players far too much, and the former amateur game of Rugby Union pays more! Let them have the top earners, and let us have our game back from the brink!

The Bulls will remain in SL as to give the place to another club would not be a great thing to do as that club would be a year behind of where they should be.The RFL wont dare kick the Bulls out with the fan base they have though that might change.
The new owner has said he wants to make Odsal the Wembley of the north and that will cost a lot of money so the playing side will suffer hes said as much as that in the T&A.There wont be cheap season tickets and people have to cut the cloth so inevitable that some fans wont be going and that would happen at any club.

Oh well that's ok then. So administration is ok at the beginning of the season, just not at the end.

Well of course the Bulls will stay in SL. The new owner is the right person to "Curry" favour with the RFL!

Take aways all round!

Although Omar did baulk at the small print saying Nigel Woods would be entitled to free all you can eat buffets at his restaurants!

On your first point who's to say that the Bulls will not be whipping boys for next 3 years as they will need to budget accordingly and with some Sky money spent already they will struggle to match this seasons contracts for next year and can see a lot of players going and the one's coming in not as good.

I think the outcome will be that the Bulls will remain in SL.

I would choose to either:-

1.Have a secret ballot of all existing Super League club chairmen(women to be PC)/CEO - (a secret ballot means that people vote freely and do not feel under undue pressure to be seen to vote a certain way, or worry of the consequences on the future of their own club).

2. A mini franchise round (which we appear to be having). The major difference here as opposed to Wakefield and Crusader's situation last year is that there is such a small time frame to put an application together. The new OK owners have very little time to get to grips with franchise requirements and submit a realistic bid. In the same way there is little time for any selected Championship clubs to pull together an application. Further, it would be difficult for a Championship club to pull together a competitive squad for next year, this close to the end of the season. Admittedly we can speculate how many of the Bulls players have agreed terms elsewhere for next year, however the nucleaus of the squad is there and puts them in a better position.

Irrespective of all this "can't manage without the Bulls"/"crowd pulling power" etc talk let's just stick to the basics.

My preferences are listed above and the RFL seems to have adopted the mini franchise process. Time is limited which is a hinderance but at least there is some form of assessment. Maybe do away with grades A, B and C which is controversial and just say who is strongest out of the applicants.

Irrespective, I really do hope that OK Bulls seek to honour many of the legacy creditors. The fans have suffered enough this season as have many of the release staff. The creditors are the victims that many have not talked about and they are probably some of the most innocent in all of this.