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.

Normal P&R wasn't working either tbf and licensing in some ways looked (on paper) a reasonable compromise - not closing the door on ambitious championship clubs, while also offering more stability - in theory. But it's ended up as the worst of both worlds - we don't have a control experiment, but clubs are still falling over too often and those outside SL have neither faith in the system or much hope that they might replace an incumbent. Understandably IMO.

The other options that I can see are:
1. A return to one up one down each year, while narrowing the financial gap between the top flight and the second tier so relegation isn't a life-threatening catastrophe and promotion looks a bit less like a poisoned chalice. The SL2 model that is proposed from time to time would be one version. Unlikely - in the absence of new money (that elusive panacea), it'd be a redistributive solution - pigs'll fly first.
2. A three year P&R cycle. Points accumulated over 3 seasons determine who goes up and down. Fewer complaints about meaningless games, or '1 bad year' ruining a club. Not so many unpleasant choices for the governing body to make - they thought they were taking on powers, when actually all they got were responsibilities. That'd be my preference.
3. An NRL model, openly and honestly admitting that the door to the top flight is closed and clubs should make arrangements accordingly - some/most championship clubs likely to become barely-autonomous reserve grade teams.