Good point.

Change of ownership, for sure.

I'm not sure you could, in equity, impose it on existing owners? That would be unfair, bit like retrospective taxation, and very bit as unfair as punishing new owners for the sins of the old? In that case, maybe use my alternative of more extensive independent financial supervision, paid for initially by the RFL?

You'd not have to impose it on ANYONE of course, if they committed to maintaining a set minimum level of shareholders' funds. Well-structured clubs like Leeds, or ones where their owner has formally subodinated his loans (like Hudds used to be - not sure opf current situation) - would not be affected anyway, since they would already meet the funding criterion.

I think this is where it went very very badly wrong when licensing was brought in. Had one of the conditions for being awarded (and retaining throughout the Licence period) a SL Licence been you must maintain a set mimimun amount of shareholders' funds, or a suitable bond or guarantee instead, and that this would be reviewed quarterly and the results made public at least to all the clubs, then I doubt we could have seen the train crashes we have.

Or, at least, action could have been taken much much earlier, before most of the damage was done. And, in particular, secret loans to clubs, like the one that did SO much damage to Bradford by postponing the day of reckoning, could thereby not have happened.

The oblem, of course, was that there was - and remains - so little real money in the game, that you'd likely have ended up with a SL of half a dozen clubs.

If you want to go down that sort of route, there's a pretty simple and better alternative:

The RFL withholds some of every club's Sky money distribution.

Then, every month, every club has to advise the RFL of what their income tax & National Insurance Contributions bill is that month after they run their monthly payroll. The RFL then pays it direct to HMRC without delay (using the withheld Sky money) as agent for the club.

Would be a very simple process to operate.

The devil would be in the detail, including the risk of the RFL being seen as "shadow directors". And, for the larger clubs, the amount would probably be more than the current Sky distribution. But my initial reaction is I very much like the sound of that.

Its too simple and straightforward and sensible though. So stands no chance of getting adopted.

I think that's a dreadful idea - one of the issues in running any business is being able to manage your cashflow, putting in some artificial constraint like an RFL holding account would seriously compromise the director's freedom of action.
Surely we just have to accept that, just like any other business there will be good management and poor management, some will succeed and some will fail.
If not, then rather than have the RFL acting as a giant piggy bank why not go to a situation, like in the US, where all the players are actually employed by the RFL and out on a draft to the clubs? Then the directors of the clubs can just manage the pie stalls - oh wait a minute.....

The thing is, though - the PAYE - or at least the PAYE other than the Employers' NIC element - was never the company's money in the first place. It was deducted from employees, and effectively held in trust pending payment. That is what makes it different to other creditors.

Once you have paid your employees, it is not your money any more.

Not paying this part of your PAYE on time is no different in my view to not paying your employees on time. People rightly go apoplectic when a business uses money due to employees for other more pressing demands. How is this any different?

If companies want to avail themselves of a loan from the taxpayer, then go through it through the proper channels. And I'm saying that as someone many years in business, some of which have been having to mange extremely tight cash flow situations.

If a club genuinely has difficulty, then the answer is straightforward. See if you can agree with the RFL about advancing Sky money. That puts the RFL in the place of HMRC as a creditor of the club, but you are keeping HMRC off everyones' backs.

Surely PAYE contributions are no different to vat ?
Once goods/services are paid for, all businesses are merely tax collectors, on behalf of the government.

Quite right, and as far as PAYE and NI is concerned there is a delay between collection and payment due date, which depending upon your actual pay date can be well over a month - that cash is better off in your own bank than in an RFL holding account. I'm not advocating not paying it on time, merely making the point that in any business cash is king and you want to be in control of it.

While I accept much of what AdeyBull has said in that post, there's no answer to why should RL businesses be treated any differently to any other business!

Very fair point about the timing differences. The PAYE is die 22nd month following. If the RFL deducted it from a Sky distribution due 1st of the month, then you have lost the use of money you are entitled to use - as long as not beyond the due date - for 22 days.

So, lets make it so either:

1 - The RFL deduct it from the NEXT month's payment - so all clubs get an interest-free loan of the amount of their PAYE bill for 6-9 days

or

2 - The RFL advances the affected clubs an amount equal to an average month's PAYE payment. Same result eitehr way.

Would something like that make it more equitable?

Very different
1. only collected quarterly
2. the gross VAT will have input VAT deducted from it so till you get to the end of the quarter there isn't a known amount.

Either of those would obviously work, but then the RFL is acting as a bank for those businesses - you call them "affected clubs" - what about the RL clubs that are well run and don't need such molly-coddling, how do they feel when they see incompetence elsewhere being effectively waved away?
What penalty should "affected clubs" have to pay for being spoon-fed in such a way - interest at x% over base?

That should help them.
Firstly, tighten their cash flow and then charge interest for doing so, nice.
Do you work for a pay day lender, interest at 4999% APR ?

All valid points (I DID say the devil would be in the detail...!)

The benefit to the affected clubs would be use of the cash for a few days. If teh amount is material, charge interest at a commercial rate.

Fine with the RFL charging clubs a fee as well for things like this. Quite proper they should do so.

The benefit to the RFL and the other clubs is that it would stop the ones with problems causing problems for the other clubs and the wider game, and getting them tarnished with the same brush.

You'd only make a club avail itself of this arrangement if it defaulted on payment. Any club that has paid on time for 12 months would either not be required to sign up to, or would be allowed to drop out of the process.

When the new Sky money kicks in, clubs that have been on their uppers OUGHT to be better placed financially. So that would surely be a good time to bring in a whole raft of governance changes?

Of course not - I'm mild mannered and sweetness & light when it comes to lending money!

The point I'm repeatedly trying to make is why should failing, poorly run RL businesses expect to be treated differently to any other failing business? If a business in trouble goes to its bank for finance to save it, the terms will be a lot tougher than if the business were blooming and the finance was for expansion.

It just strikes me that the kind of things being proposed here are soft options and invitations to behave irresponsibly.

This is the reason why it should be set in stone and have already been decided. Any decision made after game shave been played looks like it has been influenced by the results of those games, even if it hasn't.

Difficult in this case as ownership is still not sorted but the conspiracy theorists (myself included at times) will always see it the way you have described.

Totally agree with you Fordy.
The later that any decision is made (regarding any points deduction), the more angry some fans will become.
ie, if the Bulls have a poor start to the campaign and then get points deducted, it could be an early end to their season.
However, if they get a decent start and don't receive any deduction, some of the lower teams will cry foul.
It's certainly a mess which hopefully will become a whole lot clearer after the "trial" has finished.

A spelling mistake is a weak target to highlight unless is is the context if the word being misspelt that is being highlighted and not just the grammatical error itself.

BTW.....bono has nothing on me.......but I'd take being compared to him any day over being seen as Adeybulls bitch

Whilst I think you and Durham are crediting the RFL with too much thought going into the process (I dont suspect that is whats happening-more to do with dealing with the ownership debacle before the points debacle I suspect), its hard to argue that that is exactly what it will look like to many, including me. I also agree it should have been set and dealt with in the operational rules, but thats easier to say than to do, as 70 odd pages on here will testify to

A fake paddy with a massive ego and delusions of grandeur, who ceased to say anything of relevance years ago? I can see why you see Bono as a kindred spirit

The troll really is a total kn0b, isn't it? There are plenty of typos in what I post, because I type so fast being limited on time, and usually on a desktop with no fancy predictive text in the operating system to pick them up. Whoopie-do.

Says it all about the troll that it has gone orgasmic over a single letter typo. That no-one else gives a stuff about. If little things please little minds, how small does this suggest its own mind is?

I thought it might be worth noting the distinction between "Debate" and "Derision", before it wakes up and resumes vomiting over the forum, since it clearly has no understanding of it:

To Debate: to discuss a subject in a formal way.

To Deride: to laugh at someone or something in a way that shows you think they are stupid or of no value.

Since it found my previous observation about the use of derision amusing enough to wet itself over it, I'll give it another one:

Resorting to derision is the last refuge of those who cannot win a debate using facts, reasoning and logic.


btw, errors that I can see straight off in its last vomiting:

You do waffle don't you?
As I said, picking up on spelling errors and grammatical mistakes is weak........UNLESS the context of the error highlights the idiocy of its poster.
If you're going to call someone incompetent........can I suggest you don't spell it incompetant ...........

Well, if nothing else, you seem to have at least given up your habit of making up facts and figures to back up your trolling

But lets say he makes up..............20% of his facts, then he knows from what Ian Lenegan told him in a top secret..............

Text message that he wasnt supposed to tell anyone about............that 50% of

.............Text messages were owned by Omar Kahn..............That means only 2k attended................

but 1billion watched the RU game between the Auckland plastic Paddys and the London Pretentious.

That means Bradford owe .......£100billion and are going bust, London are rubbish because they dont do CRM, He is going to do a..................mail merge

earns 2trillion Kiwi dollars a day and is quite an important.................

person

His figures may be 25% but its the RFL's fault because they..................didnt tell him months in........................................................................................................................................................................................................................................advance

I'm flattered......I really am.
By the way, Ian Lenegan thinks you're a c0ck!

You actually expect anyone to believe your incredibly lame proposition that a person spelling one word "...ant" instead of "...ent" "highlights their idiocy"? It actually highlights nothing. It is one wrong letter, in one word. You were being anal in picking up on it, and you now know it.

"Highlighting idiocy", my arrse. If you actually considered that one wrong letter in one word could somehow "highlight idiocy", now THAT would be idiotic, certainly.

Is that really the best you can do when you suddenly realize you've been made a fool of? Oh dear.

WOW.....another one. I have almost as many followers on here than Bradford have had owners of late.......