Im not changing the topic at all. You said that Wakefield took drastic action to avoid Admin because the RFL told them they would need to start in C1. The inference from that being that had the RFL not told Wakefield they would have needed to start in C1 they wouldn’t have taken such action and simply gone in to Admin, avoiding debts we now know for certain they could pay.

As far as I am aware the RFL have not yet made a decision on the penalty that will be impossed on Bradford. So there are some hefty assumptions going on that they will get off scott free.

I've yet to see any rule stating administration will result in relegation. I'm not going to go into who has said what to whom as quite frankly very few of us where there.

There is a rule about not paying debts to HMRC, but this is treated seperately to administration. It has it's own little area in the rule book and there is no numbered sanction on it.

So it's entirely possible that both case are correct.

Wakey could have been going into Admin due to debts, but that may have included debts to the HMRC and they may very well have been told if you can't pay the HMRC you will have to start at the bottom again.

Bradford have been through an Admin process but have said they are working with creditors, which ( I don't know) could include the HMRC.

In terms of administration the situations are the same, but in terms of the extra blurb in the regulations one gets caught by the HMRC the other does not.

We will never know unless someone asks the RFL what exactly has happened in each case. But given that regulations cover a multitude of offenses, you can't say they are both the same if they are not.

Does anyone on here actually know the full in's and out's of both Wakefields and Bradfords Situations. Can they say that they have sat down with both situations and found they both cover the same set of rules?

Whilst the internet is awash with rumours and facts, separating out those two to decided whether they are both the same situation is imposible.

Whether a reporter will have the nouce to ask the RFL such a detailed question I doubt, as they tend to ask very general questions about the state of the game when they do get to interview someone at the RFL.

That isn’t necessarily true at all, its far too over-simplified. You seem to forget that the last few months a huge sales months from a RL clubs point of view, its when they sell a majority of their merchandise over Christmas, its when they sell season tickets etc etc. It is very possible that cutting as you describe would have meant Bradford sold next to no season tickets, next to no merchandise and lost far more in revenue than they saved in cutting costs. The idea that when you need more money to just blindly take the gardening shears to your outgoings is idiotic.

Tell me, did the drastic action Wakefield take including turning down 6 figure offers for players like Danny Kirmond?

If you had been a lawyer for 20 years im pretty confident you would know that whilst the company that ran the bulls is in liquidation, the people who ran them are still alive and still capable of being libelled.

You do realise, with all your lawyerly knowledge, that Omar Kahn still owned the company put in to administration yes? So on top of Bradford Bulls now deciding to simply go in to admin to avoid debts they could pay, we know have a more interesting accusation, Omar Kahn has fraudulently conned Omar Kahn out of lots and lots of money

HMRC LIABILITIES
A3:1 ....


It may be considered Misconduct to have HMRC liabilities, to fail to submit certification, to
submit incorrect certification or to Under Report to HMRC and such Misconduct may also
be considered to be a matter which impacts on the integrity of competition....



This is the section that could have been used IF Wakefield where to go into administration. There is no description of any penalty in the whole section. IF Bradford have agreed to pay off the HMRC debts, then again they would not fall foul of this particular rule.

The section about administrations I've not been able to find, I'm assuming it's in Appendicies E but they are not there when I last looked,.

There isnt an identical situation to compare it to, it doesnt exist, its a complex and unique situation which required a complex and unique solution. Trying to shoehorn resolutions in to vague terms isnt fairness. If we were being fair we would examine the situation on its own merits rather than desperately trying to find broadbrush strokes to draw false comparisons. The only reason that this is happening is certain fans of certain clubs see it as an opportunity for their club to gain an advantage on the field. Thats it.

Liabilities exceed income and assets. You can either increase income or strip liabilities. Players are not assets unless you can get a price for them. We did it by predominantly reduce liabilities, albeit there were some prices paid for some players.

Did the Bulls do everything to reduce their liabilities? Given that the playing squad is a fair reflection of what was on the park last year, with useful additions, like George, Carvell and Gaskell, it seems that reducing liabilities didn't go as far as possible. They could have, for example, chosen to not take on any more liabilities.

So it's never as simple as "debts they could afford to pay". It's whether you are prepared to be left with whatever you have got once the debts are paid. With the Bulls, "what you have left" seemed to include Omar Khan, and that was maybe the problem. So ask Omar Khan what his view of the administration is.

Zzzzzzzzzzzz

It was Omar Kahns company that went into administration, my guess is Omar Kahn isn’t too happy with that, But the only person with any responsibility for that and the only person who could have avoided that is Omar Kahn.

Again you ignore the possibility that reducing liabilities can also reduce income. It isn’t as simple as either increase income or reduce liabilities as you state, its increase income in relation to liabilities.

What kind of accusation is that? What on earth are you accusing him of? This is getting serious.

Sorry. Just thought I'd see how effective it felt as a tool of argument. Fairly unsatisfactory, as it turned out.

Im accusing him of being the owner of OK Bulls ltd. Though thats less an accusation more a matter of public record. Unlike others i havent felt the need to start throwing out baseless accusations.

According to certain Bulls Fans it was the security company owed GBP 180k who forced the admin issue and even you would realise that Omar Khan is not going to put the club in admin when it owes him a load of money, only then to express his shock that admin had occurred and that he was consultuing his legal advisers about the issue. I would imagine he would be looking to sue the Directors who authorised the admin and sought the pre-pack apparently without his knowledge

You are also conveniently glossing over the HMRC winding up order are you not?

The Bulls could have allowed further players to leave when they knew that they were unable to service their debts with their current level of income/outgoings (which would have eased their cash flow and allowed them to pay what they owed like Wakefield have done). Just like last time they were in admin they chose not to, in order to try and give themselves an unfair advantage over other clubs, all of which seems to be with the blessing of the RFL. The governing body with the same people in charge who oversaw a massive loan of the games money to one member club with no other members apparent knowledge and then came out with a cock and bull story about predatory developers as a reason why they bought the lease to Odsal before having to come clean when the Bulls still couldn't pay their way.

No just poor assumptions and numerous changes of direction, you clearly are a lawyer as it is the only profession that could sustain this amount of smokescreen

Im not sure why either of those things are relevant, Omar Kahn owned the OK Bulls at the time they were put into administration, he could, had he had the means and motive, stopped that happening, besides criminal accusations at Ryan Whitcut (which I will stay well away from) Where could Omar Kahn possibly have been conned? If Omar Kahn didnt know about the Admin, he has only himself to blame, these things are public for that reason.

Who are they? Brendan Guilfoyle who was the Bulls administrator previously? Omar Kahn? The three New guys?

Again, you wilfully ignore that a cut in expenditure can result in a cut in income. It isn’t income you need to increase, it isn’t outgoings you need to decrease, neither in isolation are evidence of sustainability. It is the relationship between the two which is important. There is no point in Bradford cutting their wage bill by £500k, only to their season ticket sales fall by £600k.

You seem convinced that Smokey is right and yet all other parties are wrong, because they fail to agree with your version of events, even though you were not present.

Given that Wakefield had be in admn. only 3 years ago, it seemed perfectly reasonable for them to be told that a further episode of insolvency would mean relegation to a lower league.
It is your own refusal to accept this circumstance that is allowing you to peddle the usual "Smokey is always right" nonsense and yet, to all of he people present at the meeting , the message was clear.
"IF YOU ENTER ADMIN YOU WILL BE RELEGATED" and this I why the Trinity fans are up in arms.
Of course, any conversation between Mick Carter and the RFL wont just have ben a single question, that isn't how the world spins but, this was the information given to the fans who attended the meeting and if you wish to change history, I suggest that you rent a time machine and see if you can go back in time and change what was said.

Alternatively, we could all choose to believe your own version of events, instead of the Chairman of Wakefield Trinity.
I know who I believe

The ignore user button is great.

[iThis post was made by SmokeyTA who is currently on your ignore list. Display this post.[/i

So much better.

You are though,
I responded to this:



And explained that there's no logic in your line of thought when you consider the drastic actions taken by Wakefield.

You then start spouting that I'm looking for sympathy when that's never even been part of the conversation.
You're all over the place fella!
You do this jumping from one point to another because you've painted yourself into a corner and to avoid looking bad you change the point.

Just concede, we'd all have some respect left for you then

Correct, and about the only thing you've said that I agree with.

Bradford on the other hand made no effort whatsoever to try and survive by doing what Wakefield have done and have instead taken the easy route and written off large debts that they too could have paid if they'd been willing to let any of their squad actually go. Oh, and if they'd done that the first time then maybe they wouldn't have avtually ended up in the same mess again so soon afterwards.


Thanks for finally seeing the point!

But you aren’t believing the Wakefield Chairmans version of events. You are massively extrapolating from one statement to build this whole picture to find some way in which you have been hard-done by.

You are, even though you seem to wish you weren’t, confirming what I am saying that it is naïve to think Wakefields discussions on a possible administration with the RFL weren’t far more detailed, far more specific and far more in depth than is being described here, and that leaves us with no other possibility than Mr Carter was paraphrasing and that’s fine, I am in no way criticising him for it, im not suggesting it was untoward in anyway, that he was trying to mislead in any way. Im simply saying that the broad strokes used here mean that you can find a double standard where there may be none. That the statement made by Michael Carter that ‘go in to admin and you start again in C1’ can be true, it can be a paraphrasing it could even be a verbatim quote of an unequivocal demand. It still ignores the circumstances of Wakefield, it still ignores the circumstances of Bradford and any difference there may be.

For you to choose to see this double standard, you need to simplify it further and further and further until it has less and less relation to what actually happened. For you to see this as a double standard you need to ignore the fact that nothing has happened yet, you need to ignore the circumstances under which Wakefield may have gone in to admin, ignore the circumstances they may have come out of admin, ignore the circumstances Bradford did go in to admin, ignore the circumstances they came out of admin. For you double standard to be a double standard you cant stretch much further in your descriptions than admin=C1 because the more detail we go in to, the more differences there are, the less it looks like a double standard and the more its just applying two different resolutions to two different circumstances.

Yes BRadford have.

It seems odd you need it pointing out to you again that it is very silly to pretend that cutting costs = more sustainable. It doesnt. Bradford saving £500k on wages and losing £600k in season ticket and merchandise sales does the very opposite of what you are suggesting.

[iYou said that Wakefield took drastic action to avoid Admin because the RFL told them they would need to start in C1. The inference from that being that had the RFL not told Wakefield they would have needed to start in C1 they wouldn’t have taken such action and simply gone in to Admin, avoiding debts we now know for certain they could pay.[/i

Which if it is the case shows how fickle their fan base actually is, doesnt it?

It's not an inference at all, I have no doubt that had the RFL not made their threat Andrew Glover and James Elston would have placed the club in the hands of the Administrator. That would have been wrong and the club would rightly have been relegated!

Now, remind me again what Bradford have just done?

There's a clue in the bold bit

For the avoidance of doubt - you're suggesting that whilst it was untenable for Bradford cut its cloth and risk the resulting reduction in income, it was absolutely fine for Wakefield to be forced to do the very same thing?

Yes, Bradford haven't sold off players or reduced the hours or made redundant other members of staff across the board. Nope, they've made no effort whatsover