Nothing there for me to disagree with. Crucially though they are all appointed to carry out a specific task with clear terms of reference that do not require them to consider the consequences their decisions may have on other aspects of the appointers operations. Staying with the example of the RFL disciplinary its why they use ex referees rather than current ones, why they appoint chairs with a legal background, who do no other work for them, rather than use the in house legal team and Its why they can be described as independent in the commonly understood sense of the word.

If the test for independence is simply, are you being paid and have you been appointed, nobody will ever pass it and we may as well have left Jeremy Hunt to get on with deciding what nice chaps the Murdochs are. We could have saved a fortune and not taken up the valuable time of Leveson, Jay et al..





I responded originally to a poster who described a scenario where a sum of money beyond this years entitlements had already been paid to Bradford, it suggested that an agreement to deduct an equivalent amount from next years SL entitlements had been included as part of the overall sale price but that no such deduction would or could be made if Bradford were not in SL next year. I said, simply, should that be the case an apparently clear conflict of interests would exist, with a minor moderation I stand by that. I don't suggest the scenario described has the RFL board having a preferred outcome but it does have a clear financial benefit if Bradford stay in.

The one supposition I can now see I am making is that some or all of those charged with making the decision would be sufficiently senior to have an interest in or responsibility for the financial performance of the RFL.

Or, alternatively, a measure to ensure that a club does not gain an unfair advantage by wiping off its debt ? Seems to me that the amount taken from the Bulls roughly equates to the amount of debt written off. You say the Bulls' new owners are being punished but, equally, why should they be allowed to gain an unfair advantage ? This seems to balance things out.

If the cash withheld equates to the amount advanced to the administrator then the new owners have benefited by inheriting a largely intact squad, which would most likely not have been the case had those monies not been advanced. Seems fair enough to me.

That article is all a bit flaky though.

OK, it mentions to £240k to the administrator, but also talks of a sizable chunk, don’t get me wrong that’s a fair few quid, but over two years is not big money in the scheme of things.

So, where has/is the cash the cash gone/going?

Putting my cynical hat on I would guess at the lease buy back, so come the next licence everything is hunky-dory.

whats more interesting is whats going to happen to the withheld funding. If its used to pay the creditors or goes into central rfl coffers then fair enough. If its given to the other SL clubs as extra funding then thats another matter. Could do with RFL clarifying situation.

I agree with the sentiment but the cold hard fact of the matter is that SLE can vote to distribute its revenue in whatever way it sees fit. The Sky money belongs to SLE not the RFL so if there was a majority vote by SLE shareholders to redistribute money among members then there wouldn't be much the RFL could do about it. It shouldn't happen, but it probably will just as in 1997 when Keighley, Hull KR, Workington and Prescot were all stripped of central funding due to being in administration and the money redistributed among SL clubs (guess which club proposed that motion by the way ?).