I see it's a case of taking polar opposite views or no view at all.

Could you please send me some of what you have had to drink this afternoon.
Bradford have tried the expensive investment route (twice) and gone pop ! twice.
Are you seriously suggesting, at this point in time that they should again speculate by signing a tam of "superstars", in order to protect their income ?
Fantastic !, you sir should be running the country !
The phrase about cutting ones cloth seems to be the most appropriate way forward, unless of course they can find a Ken Davy type figure, wit several million to "invest".

Can any wakey fan prove that the rfl threatened them with relegation? Because an awful lot of animosity towards Bradford appears to stem from something that I'm not sure ever happened.

.

Well down Beware, the fact no one has bothered to reply to your post probably show it's a well balanced view that no one can argue with



Can I just point out to the other posters who state Bradford "made no effort to cut cloth" as I've said a few
Times we made many office staff redundant, reduced hours. Reduction in pay.

We have lost Bateman, Platt, Langley, Naughton, Lulia, Whitehead, Murphy and L'estrange.

Yes we brought in Carvell, Ferguson George and Gaskell and Henry. Now with the exception of Carvell and possibly Ferguson the rest won't be on as much as the players we have lost.

Now Carvell was brought under the Khan regime half way through last year. The whole squad were told they could leave if they chose. If Carvell was on a £100k
+ wage at the bulls, only the top clubs have the money to pay that. But I'd imagined most are up to the cap so maybe no one was interested or couldn't afford him. We can't just sack him.

Wakey fans make out they were Holier than thou, how many winding up orders did you have last year. Thankfully for your clubs sake you sound like you got yourselves an honest businessman as chairman who won't over spend who managed to get the club off the previous regime without and fuss. Unfortunately this did not happen for us.

Unfortunately our regime overspent, the new directors came in and stated straight away they need to cut and they did! Unfortunately they could not get a deal in time until a security firm called in the administrators to get the deal done. The bulls did not deliberately go in to admin to deviously clear their debts. If they brought the club earlier I am very confident they would not have put the club into administration.

We DESERVE a points deduction, but I just thought I'd correct people who say we didn't make any effort to make cuts and deliberately went into admin because they are wrong.

As you were...

Ask the chairman. He is the source. He doesn't seem the type to BS anyone, in fact one criticism laid at him in the earlier stages was he was too upfront about sensitive club matters.

mark moore put out a press release recently and then had to admit he didn't actually know what he was taking about. He'd basically got completely the wrong end of the stick.

So I'm not saying the wakey chair was dishonest or giving bs. I'm just saying I personally question whether wakey were threatened with relegation.

Like I said he doesn't seem to be one to BS. If he said administration wasn't a possibility due to the threat of demotion then I'm happy he got the right end of the stick. Its pretty much why Andrew Glover and James Elston stepped aside. Had Trinity been allowed to go into administration, wrongly as far as I'm concerned, and stay in SL they would still be running things and likely be mucking things up again.

Glad you agree.

No, they haven't. And guess what, no matter how many times you try and pretend that they are doing the right thing by not cutting the biggest expense they have (ie the squad costs) you won't convince people that you are right.

They have now had 2 chances to reduce that biggest expense and have not really made an effort either time to do that.

To support your argument, can you please post, for each oif the 2012, 2013 and 2014 seasons:

1 - the total player cost of the Bulls squad.

2 - the % of salary cap that represents?

You must have these figures to hand, since you are quite unequivocal in your statement.

Here's a thought:

A Superleague club is in the middle of a financial wrangle with a former owner and the main shareholder. In order to bring this matter to a head they purposefully fail to pay HMRC knowing that they will threaten to wind the club thus forcing administration and therefore allow them to move the sports club into a new limited company.

But....a spanner in the works....a new TV deal is announced and the club are party to the financials of the deal and in particular a £300,000 payment payable almost immediately. This would cause a major problem to said clubs plan as such a payment would immediately be swallowed by the former owner and be lost, so in a bid to isolate it they ask their tame creditor to apply for administration of the club with the promise they'll get their full money from the new company. The new company then buys the club for the exact value of the HMRC debt which is immediately satisfied by the Administrator.

30th January: TV deal announced with the club aware it will receive £300,000 in a weeks time.
31st January: Club goes into administration to avoid £300,000 going into the wrong company's hands.

Obviously this is purely speculation as if this were true then it would be illegal.

Oh deary me the RFL trying to defraud HMRC. Heard it all now

Oh no, I don't have those figures therefore I must be imagining your club making no effort to trim their squad.
I suppose I could look at whether any players actually left and weren't replaced but to be honest I can't really be d.

I know what I believe, I can guess what you believe and the 2 are never going to be in agreement so I'll leave you alone and wait for your club to go pop again later in the season after they have run a squad they still can't afford.

Where did I say RFL were trying to defraud HMRC? A club were being issued with a winding up order by HMRC. That doesn't happen if they are being paid.

There's an easy way to disprove that conspiracy too! that plan would require a modicum of communication, planning and skill to pull off which Bradford have shown they're incapable of ...

Except...the administrator would not be allowed to settle only the HMRC debt. And the "tame creditor" would probably hold a floating charge, to be in a position to appoint an administrator, so would get paid first anyway. After the administrator, of course. And it is unclear in what way the owner (sorry...you said former owner, right? My mistake...) could access, let alone "swallow" the £300k. And in any case, other than the administrator breaking the law regarding order of settling creditors, that hypothetical scenario would otherwise break no laws.

In other words, you have no evidence whatsoever to back up your argument.

And I see that, in desperation, you now refer to trimming (the number of bodies in) the squad, whereas your original assertion was about the cost of the squad. You clearly don't have THOSE numbers to hand either, though, since the 2012 squad was considerably larger than the squad is now.

Now, last time I checked, there was no rule to insist that every player was paid exactly the same. So, you could have the same number of players in squad B as in squad A, but at an average much lower cost.

Never mind chuck, better luck next time, eh?

Very true

You don't need the numbers to make an observation

You don't need facts to make up an argument either ...

(I don't necessarily disagree with the view that Bradford could/ should of cut more from there playing budget - but saying the above isn't going to win any argument!)

One thing I have noticed regarding this thread and many others is that what happens on the field isn't seen as very important.
I always believed that what happened on the field was the key part of Rugby League.
Reading all these posts and other threads seems to show the game is not the key part.
Very strange.

And very disappointing. And demoralising. And distracting. And a load of other "disses" and dees".

All the off-field waknerage put my missus off the game...for good. And I am sure she was far from the only one.

Its all down to there simply not being enough money in the game. Those slagging off the new Sky deal are maybe missing a very impoertant point. Lets say we hung on for two more years, to see what BT might do? How many clubs we have now would still BE here in two years time? With no certainty of ongoing TV income after the end of the present deal. And how attractive would the competition look THEN to a broadcaster? I think this TV deal is the last chance for professional RL to get its act together financially, and start to make the game the key part once again. Before it is too late.

And I am bloody sick of Bradford being the ongoing tragic comedy that it has become.

But, without the numbers, that observation can in reality be nothing more than a total, subjective guess.

What always amazes me about these sort of arguments - and it affects fans of every club, at one time or another: how it is that the fans of other clubs know SO much more about the situation at a club than the fans of that club know? Even though the latter are collectively far nearer to the action, and talk to far more people close to the action?

Welcome to the Super League era where off-the-field financial and political machinations have become far more important than the game itself. When was the last time someone like an Adeybull for instance discussed anything about an actual game of RL? Way too busy positioning himself ad nauseam as an apologist for latest set of newco barrow boys in charge at Bradford.