www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/25 ... -cas-chief There is an update on the RFL website from Brendan Guilfoyle (administrator) on Bradford. He has until end of Tuesday to find a buyer, otherwise they are liquidated. Interestingly he is disagreeing with the RFL about Bradford completing their remaining games if a buyer is not found " they will cease to exist"

www.therfl.co.uk/news/article/25 ... -cas-chief There is an update on the RFL website from Brendan Guilfoyle (administrator) on Bradford. He has until end of Tuesday to find a buyer, otherwise they are liquidated. Interestingly he is disagreeing with the RFL about Bradford completing their remaining games if a buyer is not found " they will cease to exist"

Unless the RFL step in after the deadline and "buy" the club once liquidated and re-name them the RFL Bulls to play at RFL Odsal until the end of the year. That way at least the RFL wont have to worry about trying to sort out what to do about the fixtures.

That is true, but presumably once the club moves into liquidation (and ceases to exist ), the players no longer have a contract - they become 'free agents' and can move to other clubs. I suspect that the better players, or those that can, may chose this route as it will give them financial security after a painful period of uncertainty, for both them and their families.

In addition, Bradford have a pretty good youth set up and a particularly good group of U18's. These players will also probably quickly disappear along with the U20's of course.

So whilst I agree with you in principle, I would suspect that if they move into liquidation, the club will rapidly start to disintegrate.

most players can't move anywhere until next season for 2 reasons
a. clubs won't have salary cap space to pay them
b. clubs can't afford to pay them.

So staying put until season end and the RFL paying them whilst they sort out contracts with other clubs etc for next year might be an option....Don't know how the other 13 clubs would feel about the RFL footing the bill especially if the Bulls then continue to exist in some other form and somehow stay in super league...????

im sure there is dispensation in these circumstances IIRC crusaders players dont count on the cap and the aussies dont take quota spots

Quote: wolfinwidnes "im sure there is dispensation in these circumstances IIRC crusaders players dont count on the cap and the aussies dont take quota spots'" The crusaders did count on cap, it was only the non-fed and overseas quotas that had dispensation www.code13rugbyleague.com/2011/0 ... s-players/

Quote: wolfinwidnes "im sure there is dispensation in these circumstances IIRC crusaders players dont count on the cap and the aussies dont take quota spots'" The crusaders did count on cap, it was only the non-fed and overseas quotas that had dispensation www.code13rugbyleague.com/2011/0 ... s-players/

ahhhh ok but may be different in the middle of the season guess we will wait and see

Yes, good point about the cap (I suspect there will be money to buy players from some clubs) . Obviously one or two clubs may have some headroom, hence Wigan / Smith transfer (have Leeds spent their cap ?) , but in general that is probably correct. Another point for your argument is the fact that the RFL now have Odsal stadium and it would be extremely embarrassing if they didn't have a club to play there.

Either way, we will have to wait and see if the offer from this consortium satisfies the Revenue. I hope when we do come to 'close of play' on Tuesday, that the situation will be resolved and the players and staff can look forward to some sort of security.

RFL can't afford to let the Bulls fail as it will then highlight what a shambles they are as they will have a stadium they have shelled out a fortune (paid market value) for a lease from which they are getting no revenue......good jobs the clubs can't sack the board....

Presumably the RFL didn't want to lose the Bradford ground and stepped in to avoid possible loss assuming Bradford went into liquidation. Or the RFL were persuaded by Hood that the sale would see Bradford through their current financial problems. Either way, it was a very poor financial decision.

More worrying is the fact that Bradford's finances have been submitted and approved by the RFL as part of the licence agreement. I think the accounts were audited by PWC ? so they had a professional analysis of the books. Considering that the financial problems have now been shown to originate several years ago, why have the RFL ignored their situation ?

The RFL have an awful lot to answer IMO. There ought to be a full review of their decisions.

about time we had a professionally run RFL instead of jobs for the boys, old school tie, nod nod, wink wink say no more........

Latest; A summary from BBC website;


A consortium of local businessmen (incl restaurant owners) in discussions to buy the Bulls.
Administrator extends deadline until 27th July to conclude a deal.
RFL agrees to pay players wages for next month.

I think if Bradford do go under & are replaced by a championship club it might be a good idea to let the replacement club have first refusal on the Bradford players to give themselves a bit more quality & possibly avoid problems further down the line with quality of play & possible poor results.

I don't want Bradford to go under, but there's not a chance they should have their licence renewed. Obviously it's not in the interests of the competition to boot them out now without fulfilling their remaining fixtures in 2012, but their licence should be revoked for 2013 and they should then have to apply for admittance to the Championship. If that is unsuccessful (although I doubt that would be the case) then it should be the bottom rung for them. See Rangers as a similar point as it's almost certain that one of Scotland's two biggest football clubs - and a club which is probably in the top five biggest in the UK and far bigger than any RL club - will almost certainly be in the fourth tier (SFL Division 3) next season, and rightly so.

Bradford and Rangers are not identical cases, and as yet Bradford Bulls RLFC do still exist unlike the original Rangers FC who have been liquidated and a newco created, but nonetheless comparisons are inevitable and the RFL need to make a tough call on this.

I don't believe any Championship club will be ready for Super League in 2013 so it should be a 13 team league in my opinion, which may not be such a bad thing anyway. Bradford are one of the biggest six clubs in English RL and I hope they get back on their feet over the next few years - Widnes have proved it possible - but they should not be allowed to retain their current licence after this fiasco.

Exactly if we'd have had that then the Bradford board (which are independent of the RFL) would have made a whole lot of different decisions, managed their club properly and not run it into the ground wouldn't they ?