That's a big figure for the RFL to write off.
There is little doubt that they (Bradford) should have been allowed to fold first time around, without the "support" of the RFL and you have to say that, although the share with Dewsbury will save them heaps and keep them on life support for a while, they have to keep some profile in Bradford itself or they will be looking at a slow lingering death, unless there is a knight in shining armour waiting in the wings with serious cash to invest.

As has been shown with other clubs trying to build new facilities, it can take forever, especially if the council dont drive the project really hard.

Its sad for the game and you have to feel for the fans, who have followed them for years and invested so much of their time and money in supporting their team.

Allied with the low value of land in Bradford it is the worst possible scenario. I agree about the need for infrastructure but the lack of money is the Catch 22.

Yes down to around £400k which is just a bit more than they will have received in rent if the figures regularly banded about are true.

By the same token there will likely be clauses in Bradford's lease from the RFL that requires them to maintain the ground to an agreed standard. Maybe Bradford will be getting a big bill when the lease ends......

The council are likely to look for dilapadations repatriation but i think a good brief will be able to dismiss them considering the state the grounds been in for the last 20+ years. I'm sure there will be legal fees and some sort of payment required though

I think that's what I meant. Bulls are paying a lot of money to keep it to a standard that it gets a safety certificate and no more. From 1st October, the RFL will start to have to pay for the maintenance if they cannot pass the cost onto a tenant. Not only will the £72k pa disappear, but there will be an approx. £200k maintenance hole in the RFL budget. That should focus the RFL's minds on moving the lease on.

It depends whether it a is a full repairing lease or one that allows for normal wear & tear. Same with the RFL head lease with Bradford Council. Someone will have a sizeable bill.


To who? The Council might have them by the balls. If the land has very little value for anything what do they do with it. The lease very probably will not allow the RFL to develop Odsal for anything but sport. I would not like to think the RFL have ambitions to be a developer. If notoriously cut-throat developers can't make a go of a Cas or Wakey sports centre I can't see the RFL doing a better job.

The tone of your post seems to paint the RFL as the bad guys ?
Unless they have tried to add something to the "pot", all they did was bail Bradford out and now, Bradford are walking away from the lease ??
I understand that the costs may not be viable for Bradford to remain at Odsal but, these costs are nothing new, are they ?

Clearly reading the comments on here the RFL should build a super stadium and each round played there. A bit like every week being a Magic weekend.

The main gripes Bulls fans have with the RFL are mainly to do with the deduction of a full year's worth of central funding following our first admin. Whichever way you look at it, this was complete horsesh*t and pretty much guaranteed that the next owner, Omar Khan, was doomed to fail.
The RFL then oversaw and approved the appointment of Marc Green, who turned out to be a complete fraud. You could say this wasn't entirely their fault but questions can certainly be raised about their vetting process if someone like Green can get through it.
The most recent liquidation and appointment of Chalmers and Lowe as owners also stank to high heaven. We thought we were going to get some answers when it looked like the employee lawsuit was going to go to court, but 'someone' managed to agree a settlement with the employees in question and so it never got that far.

Going all the way back to Peter Hood and the initial loan, yes it was our own doing and more fool the RFL for giving us the money and not disclosing it to the other SL clubs. We can't really have any gripes about future rent and upkeep because Hood and future owners have signed leases knowing the brunt of what it involved.

But just to be clear, we are not 'walking away' from a lease. The current lease is due to expire and we simply haven't signed a new one. We will be fulfilling the obligations of the current lease, not reneging on anything. There's a not-so-subtle difference.

Well put Nothus.

Thanks for the clarification and on that basis the RFL are just as inept as many people think.
To be sitting on such a long lease, without securing tenants or, being unable to install new ones is utterly ridiculous.

The taking on of the lease by the RFL always looked like a move made in way too much haste and assuming that Bradford do play at Dewsbury, they are left with one mother of a white elephant.

If you look back to the articles around the time of the lease transferring to the RFL, the official party line was that they acquired the lease because Odsal was under threat from vultures looking to acquire the site and rob the Bulls of a home. I believe this is where the 'iconic Odsal' soundbite originated from.

Of course, all of this was a complete pack of lies. What [ireally[/i happened was that Bradford couldn't afford to repay the loan given to them in secret by the RFL some months earlier, and Peter Hood had this (not so) genius idea to give them ownership of the Odsal leasehold as collateral instead. But you can't really come out and say that in a press statement can you. Well, not without getting plenty of egg on your face.

As a side note, Peter Hood in his great wisdom completely overlooked the fact that Bradford were using the leasehold asset as security for their bank overdraft. This dipsh*t sold the asset to the RFL without realising this. I wish I could have been a fly on the wall when he got the call from his bank manager calling in the overdraft facility!

I wonder what would have happened if the RFL had said no to Hood asking for a loan in 2011? We would likely have gone into administration then. And the administrator would be trying to find a buyer for a club with about £1m in debt but with an SL franchise and an asset valued at £1.5m in 2012. We might have got a much better quality of buyer, we might have got one of those "vultures" that the RFL were worried about. But we would have been a much more attractive option then than we were 10months later.

It was a poor do all round and it would appear that the ramifications are still being felt by both the club and the RFL.
The lesson to be learned from this is that other than helping to ensure that fixtures are fulfilled (although this doesn't seem to happen in the much wealthier round ball game), They should keep well away from club politics.
The whole thing stunk at the time and as more time passes, their decision has been shown to be and absolute shocker.
I wonder how many of those involved at the RFL are still there ?

In july 2013, David Hughes had a massive dummy spit and informed feilding supremo Gus MacKay that he'd had it with london. This was after the side had been humiliated 70-0 in the cup semi and he said it was time to wind back his investment.
He put the club up for grabs, but by this stage of his tenure, hed pretty much destroyed any commercial worth and there was little interest..... So the after much cajoling, the RFL convinved the owner of Barnet FC to take the club in as tenants, with a £100,000 marketing budget sweetener... Of which £0.00 was spent on marketing...... The team was ramshackle, the coach a joke and we won 1 game in 2014........BUT, the year off from heavy lifting allowed hughes to rethink and now we have a semi-stable championship set up and the club survived.
My point is..... I'll slag off the rfl in many areas, but in this one instance, they probably saved professional RL from retreating 30 years.
Edit: That saying, they are certainly complicit in thendemise of Bradford. IMHO, they were treated likena favourite spoilt child when some tough love may have served them better

Well the RFL have conditionally allowed Bradford to share with Dewsbury.
But only for a season. Oh, and the Bulls aren't allowed to sign any players, just as an extra FU from the governing body to the club.

[url=https://www.rugby-league.com/article/55591/statement---bradford-bulls?fbclid=IwAR1GOnpYnqLhEdFHx73MPQY7AMkpJjFYW0vSi5sanHh9V5pWCmMx0_9KBxQLink[/url

Scummy club are still selling season tickets knowing that they only have 12 players contracted and no means to sign any more.

They're going to hold off showing their accounts to the RFL until the gullible Bulls fans have refilled the begging buckets for another week

Yeah, that's totally it. It's not an attempt to screw over the Bulls because the RFL are being left with a white elephant that is Odsal because the Bradford board, after years of everyone going "they need to cut their cloth accordingly" actually doing it by moving out of a crumbling stadium that they cannot afford but this isn't what everyone meant by cutting their cloth.

Don't be silly. Accounts are going to be filed by end of October when required.

When Sheffield moved to Doncaster and Wakefield did you see the RFL saying it was a poor decision and put them in special measures? The RFL stand to lose 72k a year and also have a loan out on all leasehold's they have,this is now at risk.

Poor deluded bulls fans, can't see what's right in front of your nose.

Your new owner has had your pants down

You can't see past the chip on your shoulder.

And given that you're clearly a troll, I'll just ignore your comments going forward.

Bless the RFL are 'sulking'. They have sold a lease to Bradford Council, and now what's Odsal going to be use for on a regular basis. Sweet F.A.
Placing the club in 'special measures' is taking the **ss, is that going to make the club think "hold on, we should move back to that huge expensive dump that is Odsal"

Exactly, it's likely that once the accounts are released in October and all Bradford's OOC players have signed for other clubs, the special measures will be dropped and Bradford will have to settle for the players that no-one else wants,meaning they're likely to finish lower in the table next year so along with the likely hit in income that'll result from the move to Dewsbury, there's less central funding for Bradford. It's almost like the RFL are doing everything they can to punish Bradford under the table because there's no official route by which they can take shots at the Bulls

The statement says remain in special measures. Is it poorly worded or were the Bulls already in special measures prior to this?