Who's idea was the reduction in sky monies? It's a genuine question as depending on who you listen to it was the rfl demanding it as a sweetener to the other clubs over the stadium, or an offer from OK to retain the license? sorry if it has been asked.

I think that everyone agrees that this was balmy. However, nobody has explained the full reasons behind this issue and why the OK consortium agreed to it.

To be fair, (not that there are many on this thread with that in mind) the Hood Bulls were not "overspending massively" they were paying off Leeds for the Harris farrago and paying off lawyers left right and centre.

When Bradford signed Harris in the belief Leeds could do nothing, they were spending and living as much within their means as anyone. But if Harris was under contract to Leeds, then potentially that would be a liability running into millions of pounds.

The point was never decided in court. For reasons that have never been disclosed, after years of battle, being badly stuffed for costs in an interim preliminary issue hearing, and still maintaining that they had every confidence they would win teh substantive case, suddenly out of the blue, the Bulls capitulated and did a "deal" with Leeds which amounted basically to paying them everything they wanted, plus their costs, plus all the costs which the Bulls will have run up to reach that point, plus the wasted costs of the preliminary hearing. The only apparent "benefit" for the Bulls was Leeds agreed to payment by instalments. Which, as it is relevant, it should be said the Bulls did indeed repay, in full, every penny.

So, signing Harris ended up costing the Bulls, over a period and ending some years down the road, under a new management, millions.

It is all very well saying that during the intervening years they should have underspent to cancel out the extreme loss that they would some years ahead incur, but of course, that would require Mystic Meg or some other way of knowing the future (and before you ask, yes, the Bulls DID provide for substantial legal costs of the dispute in their year on year accounts).

Nobody is looking for any sympathy, the old Bulls made what appears to have been a disastrous decision and the club ended up paying extraordinarily heavily for that decision (and not only in money). But the indisputable consequence was that far from gaining a commercial advantage by the overspend, the financial pigeons came home to roost in a big way and placed the club at such a commercial disadvantage that it was critical and maybe terminal. We will never quite know if it would have been terminal because the salvage attempt by Hood Bulls was torpedoed below the water line by Caisley - the man who signed Harris - calling a meeting to sack Hood & Co. just as the Pledge campaign reached it's end.

Really?

[urlhttp://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/QB/2005/1591.html[/url

Where the hell did you find that?

Great what you can find on the inter net with out it no body would know or care

You say nobody would care and yet, one of the most vocal and prominent posters tells us that the matter was never decided in court ??

to be fair to FA, that was a preliminary judgement that the clause itself was legal rather than the decision that Harris had broken his contract and that the Bulls had induced him to do so.

If you look at the date of that judgement it was made in 2005, the actual settlement wasnt made until 2008,

So it was tested in court that the clauses mentioned were valid and legal, it was never tested in court that Bradford had induced Harris to break his contract, nor that Harris broke his contract (though it was always likely Leeds would win, there was substantive opinion it may have been somewhat a pyrrhic victory and they wouldnt have got a whole lot of money)

The full quote from FA:



From the document you link to:



I've helpfully highlighted the bits you should have read before jumping in and trying to look clever.

I think perhaps that's starting to count angels on pin heads.

Why do you think I had not read the whole document - I have, some time ago in fact and rather than accuse me of "trying to look clever" perhaps you might like to consider what FA said before the piece you quoted

"But if Harris was under contract to Leeds, then potentially that would be a liability running into millions of pounds."

Followed by

"The point was never decided in court......."

Now as I understand it (and I fully accept that FA is a lawyer & I'm not), Bradford believed that Clause 5 was a restraint of trade and on that basis proceeded to employ Mr Harris.

It WAS then tested in court, unless you are saying that England and Wales High Court (Queen's Bench Division) isn't a court and Mr Justice Grey gave his decision, amongst others, that Clause 5 in the contract was not a restraint of trade. I guess that was what then convinced the Bradford board that there was no point pursuing the matter further and they were going to have to pay up?

See Smokey's response above. Unless you think it took the Bradford board 3 years to read the judgement?

The preliminary hearing simply decided that there was a case to answer. The case itself was never heard in court.