If I've wrongly slated Peter Hood I will hold my hand up and apologise.

make sure you come and gloat if you are right Ewwen

In response to a number of misguided comments across the social media spectrum concerning this Club and its banking arrangements I am happy to provide clarification.

In the 1990's the Club arranged overdraft facilities with the Bradford office of National Westminster Bank. In connection with this overdraft the Club provided NatWest with a ‘debenture' - a type of ‘mortgage' over all of the Club's assets in whatever form.

The overdraft was subsequently repaid in full but the debenture was left in place against the possibility of a new facility perhaps being needed in future.

In 2002 the Club returned to Odsal from Valley Parade, under a new 150 year lease from Bradford Council. The following year the Club built and fitted-out the Coral Stand at a cost of c.£3.6m paid for in cash. We also made various other substantial investments into the Odsal Stadium infrastructure.

When, subsequently, the Club arranged a new overdraft with NatWest the bank now had substantial extra security in the form of land and buildings worth multiple millions of pounds.

Furthermore, the directors provided NatWest with personal guarantees. Today those personal guarantees are collectively amount to approximately twice what the Club owes the bank.

In total, even after the Club disposed of its land to the RFL in the recent sale-and-leaseback deal, the bank still has security over bricks and mortar and personal guarantees worth in aggregate in the region of perhaps ten times the overdraft.

At no time has NatWest ever been specifically secured on the stadium - otherwise, how could we have sold it? As everyone knows, if you have a mortgage on your home and you sell it, you have to pay the mortgage company off out of the proceeds.

Peter Hood.

In other words the bank are being totally unreasonable?
No surprises there then.

You're way off the mark there. Wakefield's attendances this season have been dramatically improved (although considering how poor they were last year they weren't too bad). The average is 7898, which was 8612 v KR, 6934 v Bull (Sat night on SKY), 8794 v Hudds & 7254 v Catalan. The Hudds and Catalan games are probably about 50% up on previous seasons. And that's without any big teams (Cas, Leeds, Wigan etc).

But, back to the important issue. The question you need to ask yourself is this, do you have faith in your board that the 500k investment will ensure the long term survival of Bradford and they'll not be back begging again? Will they be viable financially in the future? For Wakefield fans it was clear the club had been managed poorly and the lack of clarity and communication from the board made it clear that any funds donated would only delay the inevitable. Sometimes it's hard to seperate what your heart and head tells you to do.

Either way, i hope only the best for you guys and whatever road you go down ensures the long and prosperous future for the Bulls and it's loyal fans. Good luck!

So even though Hood may have misled us on the reason of the sale of Odsal, he didn't lie in saying that it should have secured our future as noone could predict the bank would do this.

I'd be a bit careful throwing words like "misled" around in that context, too. AFAIK the proceeds from the sale were very substantially higher than the amount that was owing and payable to the RFL. Peter Hood told me after the forum that it was a win-win deal. My current understanding is that is was probably a lot lot nearer to being that, for a variety of reasons, than to being what people have been speculating this week. A lot nearer. I'm a lot less angry than I first was.

But isn't the reason we had to sell because we owed the RFL money. Not saying it wasn't a good deal for the club at that time, but we weren't told we had borrowed money.

Why did the RFL demand their money back? If they didn't demand it back so urgently, then this could have been avoided? Surely?

Something the RFL (only) would know and we (inc Mr Hood) will never know!

I did yesterday as despite at that point not being happy about it a feeling the board had got us into this by being incompetent. Statement today does make it look more like us being a victim of circumstances though. Something that looked like a good deal when the decision was made has then turned out otherwise due to a changing situation.

Has the statement today changed your mind at all? Apologies if this is being covered on another thread, I have just got home!