Apart from not been sure that a bank cannot wind up a club, the rest of your last point I fully agree with if you sell the asset the bank has as security generally this needs to be replaced which I would have thought would be difficult to do and a guarantee may not have been enough! In simple terms you he a mortgage you sell your house you expect to pay the bank back with the proceeds of sale and not just pocket all the cash

Banks don't pull overdrafts without good reason. They have to treat customers fairly and consider the reputational risk of their actions. Any business that says their bank just pulled their od without warning is just blaming an easy target and not taking responsibility for its own failings (and breach of covenants). What I don't understand is why the bank would have agreed to the sale of the lease for odsal to the rfl if it was securing their overdraft. They would have had to release their security...and i would've thought they would only agree to this in return for alternative security or a substantial reduction in debt. Unless rfl had first charge over the lease?

Presumably any funds pledged by fans will be held in a trust account to give them some protection. Still, I would have thought admin or cva is the more sensible option.

Is it time to take a big step back, take a long look at the game, and suggest that perhaps all but our very best 50 players or so should go back to being part time? I've no suggestion as to how those 50 players would be distributed, but we can't afford to go on paying full time wages across SL on part time income.
Perhaps if the general financial situation ever picks up, then we can go back to full time, but at the moment the game must be losing money from every club.

I can't see how the game can keep on surviving on this level of income for ever.


In the meantime - and more on topic - I fully believe the best way forward is to fold the current Bradford club and relaunch. Anything else is just postponing the inevitable.

As someone else has stated above, the idea that professional sports teams exist to make money is a nonsene. There isn't an RL club in existence that doesn't owe its existence to benefactors of some sort or other, and RL is not alone in that either. If a Russian billionaire decided to bankroll the sport the vast majority of any new money would go to players. The chances of clubs using significant extra cash to safeguard their longterm future are negligible.

I suspect that London's finances, being underwritten for two years, are more solid than most SL clubs.

Spot on!

I think Ive heard Clarky say the average wage in SL is 60-70K. There is an easy saving.

The difficulty you get is fan pressure. London for the last few years have cut there wage bill hence why they have brought in so many championship players. Look what happened, the initially poor crowd dwindled.

This year they have spent to the SC hoping for a bigger fan base(which hasnt happened due to performances I suspect) If we didn't have a big money backer we would be in deeper trouble.

Thats the dice these clubs roll-The Bulls have thrown a 1 I'm afraid.

and have 2-3 teams dominate the League for ever more? You think the gulf is big now, do away with the salary cap and see some teams become PT whilst thers sign up every decent player going. No thanks. Clubs should be able to afford 1.6mill players salaries, if they can;t they don't belong in SL.

What happened to the RFL's financial monitoring? One bad thing they did was do away with the restriction on salary cap reflective of income. Each clubs salary cap should be 50% of income up to max 1.6mill.

How did Bradford get 1mill into debt in the first place?

Can't really arguu with that, if your turnover/profit doesn't afford you to spend 1.6 mil then you should not be spending it simple.

Couple of things from that though.

If the bank had security over the lease, how was the club able to sell it, seemingly without reference to the bank? Suggests to me that the overdraft wasn't (validly at least) secured.

And why can't a bank wind a club up?

But if Bradford have income of £3-4m as reported in the T&A then they would qualify to spend the full salary cap under the 50% of income rule. It would probably need to be around 30% of income to try and ensure financial stability.
It also shows what can happen when clubs have no significant assets. It's fine when things are ok, not so fine when things go badly.

Bradford aren't asking any of their players to take a pay cut are they?

Relying on the fans is stupid and ridiculous.