Thanks again Adey, for your sound advice.
Of course, back in the real world, businesses go pop everyday and some companies specialise in taking over the failing
businesses and do very well out of them, indeed the tax man and the suppliers usually get nothing and Newco starts with a clean slate and often has the advantage of picking up to oldco assets very cheaply.
If we transfer this to the sporting arena, why should things be any different ?

To answer your question about punishing the new owners, you are choosing to miss the point.
This thread is about how we carry on in future, not directly about the Bulls.The only reason for any "punishment"
is the credibility of the sport and its organisation to the outside world and to act as a deterrent to other clubs who may fall upon hard times and want a clean slate, knowing that someone will come in with a clean slate and a clear advantage over some of their "competitors".

As you like analogy's so much, would you keep chucking your hard earned cash into situation where, those people involved regularly mis-managed their affairs or, would you find something else to do with your cash ?

Of course RL has no difficulty in attracting sponsors !

And the point you are missing is that your ‘punishment’ doesn’t deter anyone from doing anything other than detering people from trying to invest in struggling clubs, because the one running up the debts isn’t being punished.

If I spend too much on a credit card, and you get a bad credit record, where is the deterrent to me to not run up a massive credit card bill? Is the credit system any more creditable because you have been punished even though you were completely the wrong person to punish?

The fact is that your need for a punishment is misplaced. There is nothing, not one single thing, you could do to Bradford Bulls now, that would have had any effect whatsoever on the way the previous owners ran it. You could jail the new owners, you could kill em, you could force them to sit through a statistics lecture with Phil Clarke, you could relegate Bradford, you could close them down as a club, you could make every Bradford employee wear an itchy jumper their gran knitted for the rest of their lives, no punishment to Bradfords new owners, is a deterrent to their old owners.

We could have a hard and fast rule that any club which goes in to admin gets immediately relegated to C1, cant be promoted of 10 years, pays 10% of its income to the rest of the clubs, is allowed no more than 5 pro players, has to wear a pink kit. Anything at all you can think of, make the punishment as destructive and draconian as you can possibly think of. It is still not going to affect the behaviour of people who wont be on the receiving end of such a punishment.

Being a Bulls supporter, unfortunately that is what I keep doing... I've just today paid £120 to the Supporters' Trust, for example.

I don't think there has ever been any suggestion that people buy RL clubs out of insolvency because they "...specialise in taking over the failing businesses and do very well out of them"? though? Only a total fekkwit would buy a RL club out of insolvency with that in mind?

I can see people wanting to stop what they see as recurring financial issues in the game as a whole. Although I HAVE noticed some correlation between those whose clubs who have already been through the process (and pain) of insolvency, and those who support this the most. For those clubs who have not (yet) suffered what they did.

Which is all fine and dandy.

OK, it could be argued that, since the underlying cause of all of this is that there is too little money in the game, aided and abetted by too little control over how clubs manage their financial affairs across the game as a whole, all their proposals amount to is rearranging those famous Titanic deckchairs? Not sorting the underlying problem (which maybe the new Sky TV deal will go some way towards).

But it does not address the underlying point. Punishing current owners for sins of previous owners will do nothing to resolve the underlying problem. Which is why people like me question the motives of many of those seeking to see the Bulls "punished" again. In too many cases, it looks less like a genuine attempt to stop future problems, and more like an attempt to hamstring a rival club - or to exact revenge for perceived past wrongs.

You will never get anyone holding THOSE views to change their view or position, no matter how strong or irrefutable your argument or logic. (And all clubs have plenty of those, Bulls no exception). What you CAN attempt to do, and why I post bits on here like this, is to try and provide more information to help those without partisan agendas to maybe form a more comprehensive view?

If you REALLY want to deter irresponsible or reckless behaviour, and to bring more effective financuial control into the game (and surely we ALL want to see that?) then you have to have the threat of punishment hanging over CURRENT owners. Not future ones.

Does that mean obliging all owners/propspective owners to put up a bond, in favour of future creditors, in the event of insolvency?

Does it mean that, as an alternative to a bond - e.g. for owners who lack the wealth to be able to do that - them agreeing to a much higher level of hands-on financial supervision and hand-holding, for which they would be expected to pay a commercial fee through the RFL? Given how pìss-poor the financial expertise is across so much of the game? (And if the RFL ever want someone to do some of that, for a perfectly sensible fee, you know who to call...).

Does it mean any owner choosing to "invest" in a club not tghrough shares, but by lending it money, being obliged to legally subordinate some or all of his debt to rank behind the claims of all the other creditors? So removing the comparative advantage of funding a club through debt not equity?

Os some combination of the above? (My starter for ten...)

THIS to me is the sort of direction the debate should be taking. Rather than concentrating on, once again, punishing Bradford's new owners for the sins of the previous, and making them the Admiral Byngs of Rugby League - [ipour encourager les autres[/i...

I like the way you are thinking. Especially the last suggestion.

We need to talk...

Thanks again Adey

You still chose to miss the fact that this thread is about future conduct, not the Bulls (unless they go pop again)
However the nub of your post (about punishing the new owners) is impossible.
Unless there were live accounts that were audited at regular intervals, how could you punish the previous BoD, other than the fact that they may have already blown some of their own cash when the ship went down.

Personally, in principle, I don't have a problem with a club, that has gone pop, having to start from a lower league (or suffer a hefty points deduction.
Just for arguments sake, lets say that said club wins the league, having gone pop a couple of months earlier and having started again with a clean slate, how would that look to the outside world ?
Should we all applaud and say well done or, would there be just a little bit of disappointment that this has been allowed to happen.
Not Bradford but, some club at some future point in time.

should be just a graduated points penalty depending on the amount of debt left unpaid by the new owners......no creditors (apart from previous owner/directors) owed money then no points deduction...the more creditors are owed then the greater points deduction....DEFINATELY NO FINANCIAL PENALTY as this will deter new investors and start the spiral of incurring debts again

That's broadly how I see it, too. See above.

Is it? So the obsessive who posted this in the opening post[iIn case you are wondering, this is most assuredly directed towards the ICONIC club who it seems are in a constant state of flux, but not required to cut their cloth accordingly![/i

Must have been accidentally misposting it from another of the numerous threads that he has vented his unhealthy obession with Bradford on?`

But, I'm not missing any fact anyway.

If we ignore the inane ramblings of our resident obsessive, and the thread IS about future conduct, then you have not yet explained how punishing new owners will deter ANYONE from making the same mistakes (or worse) that Bulls, Wakey, London, Salford etc PREVIOUS owners have made (in greater or lesser measure) in the recent past?

I've already given three possible solutions, which you dismiss.

Two of those result in real financial pain to the owners, and one of those requires the owners to front up with funds at the start, as a demonstration of good faith. You'll have a lot more chance stopping irresponsible behaviour by owners if they KNOW it is THEY who will be hit financially if the club goes bust, than you will by hitting their successors. Can you not see that?

The third is effectively requiring clubs without a very wealthy owner to have an experienced, independent, non-exec finance director. Who has to report monthly to the RFL. You don't get the RFL to do the policing, you get an independent professional to do it, who has no axe to grind one way or the other, otehr than a genuine desire to help the club survive and prosper. Filling what is so often a huge hole in the teams that owners - so often salesmen - put in place.

Your response seems to be to keep insisting on automatic points deduction or relegation, regardless. Even if there is no unfair advantage gained. Even though it has surely been demonstrated, and not refuted, that such actions do NOTHING to stop it happening again. Nothing.

Surely pie.warrior's proposal is the way to go, to ensure no unfair advantage is gained?

I'm sure you are not one of these folk who want to see Bradford punished to help their own club or to right perceived past wrongs, so I must admit I'm a bit perplexed with your responses here.

Im must be seeing this slightly different to others.

Isnt it Bradford Bulls(replace with any other club) that the punishment is aimed at,rather than the company behind it?

IE,The limited company takes on all the benefits of taking over Bradford Bulls trading name.such as the super league licence,but must also take on the pitfalls that come with it.
Not certain on this,but the licenses were awarded to the clubs - not the company behind the clubs,therefore surely it follows that the club has to be punished.

Adey, looking at all your recent posts you're spouting the same bull' as you did when Bradford first went belly up. TBH the sooner they stop fudging the issues, go completely poop and start again at a LEVEL THEY CAN AFFORD the better as far as I'm concerned.

There are two ways of looking at it.

This is a new company, in which case you have to ask, other than being new, what are we punishing for?

Or this is a continuation of the old club, in which case why are we trying to punish a struggling club for struggling, and why is our solution to a club struggling to punish it, make it harder for it to recover and deter new investors from it.

None of these punishments make any sense if our aim is for a club to recover and fulfil its potential.

Well put Turfedout.

There does seem to be some history between Gutterfax and The Bulls fans and there are some excessive and inane ramblings in both directions.
But, the thread is supposed to offer a solution from 2014.
Obviously licensing has now ceased (or will have from the start of next season).
Pie Warrior isn't too far off with his solution and Adey does now seem happy for "punishment" to be "suffered" by the new BoD, what a relief for all of us.

Is that the sum of your considered, objective analysis? Pretty lean pickings indeed, if it is.

As it happens, if it was the same shower running it, anything other than a pretty severe penalty would be hard to argue against. One of my pet hates is owners/managers of a business letting it go bust, screwing the creditors, and then starting up again as a phoenix. But, lets apply your logic to a simple analagous scenario, shall we?

You bought a used car from a dealer. You even agreed to pay off the HP owing on it by its previous owner, even though it was not down to you to do that. Then you get told that, because its previous two owners were incompetant or useless drivers, you are not allowed to drive the car on motorways or A roads. Yet you believe yourself to be a good driver, and able to pay your way in the world too. And you cannot understand why folk are demanding the car be punished for the sins of its previous drivers. And you, as the current owner, with it.

And the previous useless driver anyway complains that the only reason HE lost the car was because a big chunk of his earnings had been confiscated by the authorities, because of the antics of the PREVIOUS owner before him. And that he agreed to that crazy condition because he really thought he could do some good with the car, but badly underestimated its running costs.

How would you, the current owner of the car, feel when some of your neighbours were lecturing you that everything above was all perfectly fair and reasonable? How would your familty and friends feel? And react?

No I don't. I never said that. As a blanket statement. Put your straw man away.

Any handicap (you can't "punish" someone for something someone else did) should be proportional to any comparative advantage gained. No advantage, no handicap. Big advantage, big handicap.

Even then, you need to set the handicap at a level where it does not make it too big a mountain to climb for the new owners, so there is no point in them taking it on in the first place.

Sorry if I keep pointing out inconvenient truths to folk who do not want to hear them.