Comments noted, however, if you had sold a couple of your superstars before the season commenced, although you would undoubtedly have had a weaker squad, you would have saved cash on their wages and received a substantial fee. This would certainly have covered the cost of some of your admin dtaff who were sacked, so to talk about people suffering is strange, when things could and should have been handled somewhat differently.

I'm not a Bradford fan.

Nobody - and I do mean [inobody[/i - is arguing that the Bulls weren't mismanaged. But the people who mismanaged the club aren't there any more. And while we'd all like different choices to be have been made, they weren't. We are where we are and have to deal with the situation as it exists, not as we might have liked it to exist.

Stickies really are a great place to hide things!

As I've been boring people with on our board:

Oldco should, IMO, retain the licence. And would I'm certain.
They can give a place to a newco, but not a licence - we'd have to do away licensing to put a newco Bradford into SL.

Most seem to think it'll be an oldco which after this whole farrago surprises me somewhat, but would definately be the best possible outcome.

The title is becoming more and more accurate by the day

This would only be a fair process if the 'vacant' licence was offered to all qualifying sides in the Championship as well as the Newco. Otherwise you have pre-judged that the Newco's application is automatically the best.

Sigh.

i have changed to topic title as it was confusing people and i forgot to change it

There isn't time to do it properly IMO.
A newco Bradford with a SL licence in 2013 leaves licensing with zero credibility.
If a newco is admitted to SL, I wholeheartedly hope they face up to what that means, and don't go through some sham 2 week application procedure.

But they are doing a full review now – the potential bidders for the Bulls are having to submit a full business plan, proof they have the funding and no doubt many other things we are not being told of.

As I said, provided that the RFL agree to sale of the Bulls then I think it is safe to say that the new buyer will already have “passed” the licence review system – since essentially the licence review is only what they are doing now anyway.

It would be silly to do a 2 week (and counting) review to find a buyer and then ask them to submit the same information again for a separate quick review after to grant a licence – it makes more sence to do the licence review at the same time as the bids, which is what I would recon the RFL are doing now.

In an ideal world yes the licence would be up for all clubs to apply for, but this isn’t an ideal world. Do you honestly think that, if a club with the name of Bradford Bulls – who have had so much success in the last 10 years (though admittedly not in the last couple) submit a bid that matches the minimum requirements that the RFL would accept another bid by Halifax – even if it is a “better” bid?

In a perfect world the “best” bid may well win – but in the real world that would never be the case.

Okay, debatable but not laughable - the message I take from that is that licensing doesn't work in the real world.
What you'd effectively be giving Bradford is not a licence but a franchise - the business running the franchise might fail, but the franchise always remains and can be transferred to new management as and when appropriate.
Do we then give franchises to all SL clubs?

edit - just to be clear, the above is only if it is a newco - if the buyers can reach a deal with creditors, then that is different.