As a matter of interest, if the Bulls receive £500,000 from their fans it will presumably be taxable income, won't it?

Donations are not ' Vatable '

Bring back Rodney Walker and the team who oversaw the RFL getting in to enormous amounts of debt after the 2000 RLWC? As far as I'm aware, the RFL these days is a profitable organisation ... I could be very much mistaken with that, mind you, so I'm ... open (not happy) .. to being corrected on it.

Which is very commendable , unlike 95 % of its member clubs

Which is similar to most ' major ' sports governing bodies , so is that good management , or just a sign of the times ?

One article I read seemed to indicate that RBS were/are unhappy about the lease on Odsal no longer being used as a security on the clubs' debts, which has resulted in a 'altered credit arrangement', [ithat[/i kind of thing [ican[/i happen overnight. Even so, if the club had used the Odsal lease as security with RBS and then sold that lease on without realising it would cause problems down the line, it still shows a level of incompetence that is unforgivable.

Nine consecutive years of pre-tax profits (up to the end of 2010), record turnover, record amounts paid out to member clubs according to the last Annual Report.

The RFL cannot be held accountable for individual clubs failing to obey basic business principles of not spending what you either don't have or can't afford to borrow.

For those that are continuing to talk about leases and so on that the RFL supposedly own...

According to a quote from a local councillor in this article the land was signed over to the RFL by Bradford council. I'm not sure where you are getting your information from that they only own the lease.
[urlhttp://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/news/9615800.Politicians_call_for_talks_with_struggling_Bradford_Bulls_over_cash_crisis/[/url

Well it would be wouldn't it



I think you protesteth to load, so I reckon I'm on the right lines.

VAT aside, only profits get taxed.

I suspect that's a local councillor paraphrasing a situation rather badly.

The council, as owners of the freehold, allowed the lease on the land to be signed over from the Bulls to the RFL - at least that's my understanding.

So the council own the freehold, the RFL own the leasehold and the Bulls are their tenants.

I know that but it is still taxable income to be offset against expenditure.

Are ' donations ' vatable ?

but bradford are running at a loss, aren't they? Corporation tax won't come into it.

Some one ealier said no. I couldn't say for sure but would reckon not.

I certainly hope that Bradford recover from this and continue in the League.

However I can't help but feel that the RFL have known far more than is being let on. In January they suddenly become the leaseholder and the Bulls their tenant. Then the monies owed to them are expected to be repaid as Bradford people indicate this was not their expectation. So while Bradford are in a financial pickle (one of liquidity rather than anything else) the RFL appear to have done a smart bit of business and safeguarded their resources before the till was closed. Also not a lot left for the others to pick over. Meanwhile if the Bulls did go under the lease with the Council is unaffected as this now sits with the RFL. RFL is likely to be more sympathetic to a reconstructed club ensuring a location is available for the future. You'd almost think that might have been the plan.

Anyway good luck to those seeking to raise the money.

Having just listened to the start of boots an all I cannot believe what has been said! The Bradford chief exec is on saying that we want Bradford fans to dig deep and help the club( they already buy shirts lottery ,season tickets) they need them to donate £ 500,000 to keep the club going (possibly) as they really need a million! Bit he doesn't expect players to take a pay cut ? We then go back to the studio and phil says" the chief exec is doing a really good job" what? And all the fans should dig deep and help .... Now I must be missing something here but it sucks , basically they want the fans to tip up more money , they will still get there money directors staff et al . And they know the fans will try their best to keep it going , but surely it's like a hammer to crack a nut what happens in 6 months ? Cap in hand again ?

Being that bradford are now in such a financially perilous state, would/should it be prudent for the rfl to now with hold the monies it gives out to this club until such a time it sorts its problems out?

I think the bank did that already, which seems to have caused the problem in the first place.

Yea it sounds like that, but the sky tv money and possibly other funding that the govening body distribute arent a right,you have to justify it.Surely Bradford now scratching around to pay debts that were avoidable isnt the problem for the rfl or the game as a whole

If the version of events that a number of us have heard parts of, and have pieced together tonight, is broadly correct, then much of the present crisis is due to unexpected actions taken by third parties (not HMRC) in recent weeks that no club lacking a rich owner could anticipate or cover.

I'd prefer to get more of the tale before being more specific, but so far the tentative conclusion is that the club's plans and forecasts were blown out of the window by recent events it could not have reasonably foreseen.

Sorry if I've missed this in the thread, how much did Bradford owe the RFL and for what?

Bulls and RFL collude in "no one would have seen it coming" statement shocker!

Be careful Adey mate - you were let down before

Hope the Bulls survive - for mine, I wouldn't bail out that board of yours, let administration run its course and come back stronger.

But I know nothing of what's happening! All the best to you cattle all the same!

On the contrary it seems like this situation has been brewing for ages. Like you I'm just piecing together scraps of info but clearly at some point the Bulls have required a substantial input of cash from the RFL (one poster on totalrl.com says this was a £700,000 loan early in 2011). The suggestion is that Bradford then struggled to meet the repayments on the loan and in order to protect their monies and also secure RL at Odsal in the future, the RFL purchased the Bulls' lease (the above source says for £1.2m, Sporting Life states £2m). It maybe that the bank trousered the difference to pay off the existing o/d and then Oinevitably refused to renew the facility as the club no longer held the asset of the Odsal lease. So far from being a sudden an unexpected development, the Bulls current plight seems to have been brewing for some time.
Even if the RFL hadn't bought the lease, presumably Bradford would have maxed out on their o/d facility sooner rather than later at which point the club would have lost its home and the RFL a ton of cash.

Not quite.

It seems the Bulls indeed borrowed £700k in 2011 from the RFL (secured ion the assets by a second charge, incidentally - visible to all at Companies House from Jan 2011). When I put the £700k figure to the CEO he did not deny it.

It seems to me the deal to sell the stadium to the RFL was at least in part due to the club not being in a position to repay that loan. So the RFL got an asset instead. If so, puts Odsalgate 2012 into a whole new light now, eh?

I understand the loan to the RFL was not to be repaid immediately, so the club could use the funds from the sale to deal with other pressing issues (including tax, I think) and not have to rely on using the bank overdraft (I surmise).

It then seems that (for reasons I am unclear about) the RFL required the loan to be repaid now rather than when was originally (supposedly) agreed. SOmetime in the last few weeks.

The bank, it appears to me (and knowing from the horse's mouth they have been keen to get out of exposure to RL clubs for years) saw the cash coming in, and did what banks so often do and grabbed it and reduced the facility as a result. The Bulls had actually asked the bank for a small increase to help plug the gap for a few weeks because of the RFL loan repayment. The bank instead pulled most of the facility. I gather this was last week.

So the club appears (as far as I can deduce, anyway) to have been hit by a double-whammy: RFL requires earlier repayment of loan; Bulls look to use whole overdraft facility, and a bit more, to plug the gap for a few weeks; bank instead pulls rug from under them.

Also, there would be no value to the bank in the old Odsal lease in the event of insolvency, since it would be voided and the site revert to the council. So why would the bank treat it as the main security? Anyone?

Now if the above, which is a combination of public information, things I have been told and personal deduction, is anything like correct, how does that now make it look?

Like a small plate of facts smothered in a gallon of supposition sauce?

The key question in all of that is why did the Bulls find themselves having to borrow £700k from the RFL in the first place, rather than through normal commercial routes?

Were they really that toxic or lacking in assets that no commercial lender would touch them?

If so, how did the club to get into that state in the first place?

It's ok for Bulls BoD to point fingers at the RFL, at RBS or even at other clubs, but there has been a seriously high level of mismanagement at the club. The whole business appears to have been precariously tiered like a house of cards and at the first sign of a stiff breeze has toppled over.