Calling them franchises would have been better than licences in my opinion yes. But then ofcause you have the problem of giving one to all clubs.

(My apologies to Castleford fans for using your team as the example below – I am not implying you should not have a licence nor saying you are in any kind of financial trouble - I could have easily have used any club who has not won a title in the past 10 years [and further apologies if you have won a title, I just can’t remember it])

The fact is the loss of Bradford would be a bigger loss for the sport than the loss of Castleford for the simple reason of their recent achievements. For your fan who is a long time fan of Rugby League they may not see this but the RFL has to look at potential fans too – a club with the recent success of Bradford being in the lower leagues (or non existant) is far worse than a club of Castleford being in the lower leagues. To use the example of Rangers who many people on this thread have used as an example – I used to have a passing interest in the SPL to see how the title was going to run – weather to Rangers or Celtic – now I have no interest in it at all, and I’m sure I’m not the only one – how much will the SPL lose as a result of TV money when however many people stop tuning in, how much of that money was used by the “smaller” clubs?. Now RL has more than 2 clubs but the point remains that the loss of a Bradford a “big club” is harder to bear than the loss of Castleford a “little club” since people outside the sport know the name.

Does this fact incurage reckless spending to win cups – yes it does to some extent (hence why we have a salary cap). But considering that the people who did spend recklessly at the Bulls have lost everything they “invested” in the club and no longer have any dealing with it it’s probably not as much as an incentive as people think.

So what would you do then – give a franchise to the “big clubs” but not the “little clubs”, that could work – but you would have even more up in arms than the current system (which I agree is a complete shambles).

What will really happen is what has happened – the RFL will do all it can to save the successful clubs and be a little less desperate to save the unsuccessful one (though claims that they would turn away and let them go bust without help seem a little harsh). Is this “fair” – no, not at all, but who ever said that life is “fair”. I can’t think of one other area of life that is “fair” – why should sport be any different?

Unfair is one thing, openly rigged is another. Sport needs at least a veneer of fairness and equitable treatment of participants, or it ceases to be either interesting or indeed sporting.

And I'm not being funny, but Bradford aren't even [ithat[/i big. SL has rumbled along okay since Warrington took their place in the de facto Big 4, and it'd get on fine while they rebuilt in the lower leagues if that is what is needed. Not that that is particularly easy, but that's for another thread.
I don't wish Bradford ill and I hope it gets sorted - I'd even turn a blind eye to one or two compromises, but if saving Bradford means abandoning even the pretence of trying to do right, then that is shameful and stupid.

This
Very very well put, Mild Rover

BTW Where was the help for Blackpool?

You disagree? I'm surprised - I thought you'd be dead set against a newco Bulls just being handed a licence for 2013 by default.

You don't know why i sighed?

Sigh

Indeed. I was indicating what would be needed to make the process a fair one, not suggesting that it was practical.


I agree with this and your subsequent posts. At the moment I have no problem with the efforts being made to rescue the Bulls, but simply handing a newco a licence without them having to go through the full application process would be a rather large step too far - regardless of any threat of a financial penalty being imposed.

I won't take up your kind offer to expand. There's enough BS shovelled by the RFL without me adding to it.

From the interview on BnA last night with Gerry Sutcliffe, I got the impression that they were willing to take on (and presumably hope to reach a deal on) the debts. Eddie seemed to almost take it as a given. Fair play in that case and it IMO solves the problems as well as was realistically possible.

I still think some of the shortcomings of licensing have been exposed and it should be looked at - but we hopefully don't have to rush into anything new now.

To the tune of 10p in the £ probably. Lets all do it......bring the game of rugby league into disrepute that is.

Taken from the Bulls board, a letter from the administrator contains the following:

The Joint Administrators anticipate realisations from the disposal of the Company’s assets will be insufficient for a distribution to be made to the unsecured creditors...

If true, that sounds (to little ol' untrained me) like the bid is for the assets of the Bulls rather than the Bulls (if you see what I mean) and those'll be used to start over with (unsecured) creditors getting nowt. Hmmm.

Newco then? Otherwise debts would still need paying surely

There are mechanisms for an oldco to avoid paying all it's debts, but they all (I think) require agreement from the creditors. Seems unlikely in the extreme that HMRC would be happy with that.

BTW, there are plenty of precedents for clubs using a CVA or similar to avoid paying creditors the full whack. The Bulls would hardly be breaking new ground.

Absolutely true. And I'm not taking a holier than thou line. If Bradford could reach agreement with 75% of their creditors, then that'd do for me. They and the system could carry on with a meaningless black mark against their name for the next round of licensing.
But not starting from scratch [iwithin the framework of licensing[/i - I know there have been spectacular fudges in the past, but not while simultaneously try to maintain a pretence of regulation and good governance.
As with referees, we can have (or at least aspire to) 'common sense' or 'consistency'. There's a decent common sense argument for another fudge, but then we have to face up to the licence criteria being, like the pirates' code, 'more what you'd call guidelines than actual rules' and them being treated with a similar level of respect.

edit: I know you weren't responding to me, btw. I'm just concerned about them making a mess of this... well, in fairness, mess.