They are different circumstances definitely. However when you strip everything away. SLE (Read RFL) have jumped in and saved a dying club. They didn't do the same for another dying club and probably will never do so again. For people involved personally, its going to be difficult to understand the reasons why.

This is wrong for me.

How can a competition buy a club that's competing in said competition.
This is like the Premier League buying let's say.................Liverpool/Arsenal or any other club in the Premier League, it just isn't right at all.

If this happens the integrity of Rugby League in this country will be non existent imo.

I wonder if the RFL hadn't bought Odsal would this be happening? I think the RFL are concerned that if Bradford went bust then they would be stuck with a ground with nobody to play in it and that would be embarrasing.

No, I think you are not looking at this in the wrong way

At the moment SL is getting very bad press as this whole issue drags on. Its embarrassing, its damaging to our image, it puts off potential sponsors (who want to be associated with a successful sport), it will make it more difficult to negotiate lucrative deals with Sky (' well we are interested in putting the money in guys, but how many clubs are you likely to have in 2014 '?).

Then there is the effect on the clubs players, family, academy sides who simply have no security and have to listen to a series of offers, rejections and endless speculation.

Then we have the problem of the remaining Bradford SL matches. If they are liquidated, what do you do about the points already won and lost ? and Leeds play them 3 times by the way. Plus all the additional bad publicity / embarrassment of the solution.

The consortium offering to buy the club wanted guarantees that the RFL were not able to give, plus it looks to me as though they were intending paying for the club and lease from their business cash-flow (rather than put money up front), plus this was a business taking on a rugby club as a commercial venture ( we want directors who want to run a rugby club, but to manage it in a financially sound way).

Finally, BG the administrator has the power to liquidate the club if the RFL rejects the consortium offers. If that happens, the Bulls disappear for good.

So by stepping in and OFFERING ( not accepted yet; I think Tues /Wed is the deadline) to buy the club, a lot of these problems are sidestepped. It will give time (until end Nov I am hearing) for SLE to find another buyer on their terms. It will provide some security for the players, it will allow the SL season to be completed, it will remove BG from the equation and allow the RFL to control the show. Even if no buyer is found, it will allow an orderly dismantling of the club rather than an immediate liquidation and for the players to look for alternative clubs.

Its all IMO, but I think this solution is by far the best, even though you can certainly argue that Bradford are getting far more support and preferential treatment than other clubs that got into financial difficulty in the past. Its also a solution that all the SL club chairman have agreed to - Moran included.

No, I think you are not looking at this in the wrong way

At the moment SL is getting very bad press as this whole issue drags on. Its embarrassing, its damaging to our image, it puts off potential sponsors (who want to be associated with a successful sport), it will make it more difficult to negotiate lucrative deals with Sky (' well we are interested in putting the money in guys, but how many clubs are you likely to have in 2014 '?).

Then there is the effect on the clubs players, family, academy sides who simply have no security and have to listen to a series of offers, rejections and endless speculation.

Then we have the problem of the remaining Bradford SL matches. If they are liquidated, what do you do about the points already won and lost ? and Leeds play them 3 times by the way. Plus all the additional bad publicity / embarrassment of the solution.

The consortium offering to buy the club wanted guarantees that the RFL were not able to give, plus it looks to me as though they were intending paying for the club and lease from their business cash-flow (rather than put money up front), plus this was a business taking on a rugby club as a commercial venture ( we want directors who want to run a rugby club, but to manage it in a financially sound way).

Finally, BG the administrator has the power to liquidate the club if the RFL rejects the consortium offers. If that happens, the Bulls disappear for good.

So by stepping in and OFFERING ( not accepted yet; I think Tues /Wed is the deadline) to buy the club, a lot of these problems are sidestepped. It will give time (until end Nov I am hearing) for SLE to find another buyer on their terms. It will provide some security for the players, it will allow the SL season to be completed, it will remove BG from the equation and allow the RFL to control the show. Even if no buyer is found, it will allow an orderly dismantling of the club rather than an immediate liquidation and for the players to look for alternative clubs.

Its all IMO, but I think this solution is by far the best, even though you can certainly argue that Bradford are getting far more support and preferential treatment than other clubs that got into financial difficulty in the past. Its also a solution that all the SL club chairman have agreed to - Moran included.

I think this is a good move by SLE.

Our sport is a relatively small sport and it would do it no good to see a team like Bulls disappear. It would send all the wrong messages to the wider sporting community, the media and sponsors.
Hopefully it's a short term measure and ownership can ''bought'' by an independant group when things become a little clearer.

However the thing that still irks me is (and on the same page as the detail of the Bulls bid on the SL website) that bulls aree given a grade B in 2011 and given a 3 year licence on the back of it.
I'm in favour of the licence system BUT how the ~~~# can they be grade B? The regulators have made a serious error of judgment on the state of the Bulls and it makes a mockery of the licence system.

Well as i said in my earlier post its a conflict of interest however you look at it,Anyone remember when they said Nottingham Forest to good to go down etc etc,well tbh im sick of hearing about Bulls being a big club etc we cant let them go,well sorry i believe at minium they should be put into the championship,some may say im being harsh but thats the way it is.

I'm finding all this blaming of the RFL and SLE a little ridiculous now. Surely the people to blame are the previous board for deceiving just about everybody, and Caisley for the Iestyn Harris affair which cost them a huge amount of money.

They can't have taken this lightly and it really must have been a last resort. They obviously feel Bradford are too important to lose and have taken drastic action. Bit like the govt. bailing out banks.

Long term, this cannot work. They'll look to sell pretty quickly I'd imagine because it will create all sorts of conflict scenarios, most of all if licensing survives (although that seems unlikely). The "precedent" and "they didn't do this for other clubs" arguments are valid must miss the point. Bradford are not Wakefield, Crusaders or (gulp) widnes. They've treated Bradford as a special case, however morally unpleasant that seems. It's not "fair" but since when did fair matter in top level sport?

Yeah, this was the problem, not the licensing system. As far as I can tell, the board had fooled everyone into thinking that Bradford were in a better position financially than they were, probably so that they got their license and could gamble on something like a cup appearance.

The important difference between Bradford's current situation and that of the others like Wakefield is that Bradford face liquidation in a matter of days. The others had assets that they could (reluctantly) sell to pay their debts if they couldn't find a buyer, which in the end they did. Bradford has nothing - only the players, who become free agents if no buyer turns up.

They also all found buyers with plenty of time for the deal to be arranged. If their administrations had gone on as long and as desperately then the RFL might have stepped in at the last minute for them too, but obviously they can't say "we will step in if nobody buys" because then potential bidders will hold off and wait for a better price from the RFL. The worry is that they have now set this precedent, so if (when) this next happens people will expect it of them.

So what happens if, and it's a big if, no buyer is found?

When Hull and Gateshead were merged, the SL clubs put in around 1 million pounds and each SL club 'owned' around 10 % of Hull. So I think the precedent has already been set, but I would agree it is far from ideal and once the league season is over I think the Bulls are likely to be sold on very quickly.

I think the chances that a buyer for a SL club will come along are very small;

Nobody has come along so far
It would prob. require £2m up front investment
It would need a business plan with income streams (Bulls are losing money)
It would need to be done very quickly
Lastly and most importantly, it would have to be agreed by SLE.

You have to remember that there are other SL clubs out there that are scraping along, and who will ask the question ' are we also going to be bailed out if we get into difficulty'. These same clubs though voted unanimously to buy the Bulls. Ask yourself why ?

I think you will find that the Bulls will be sold as a Championship side. This would make the amount of money required by a prospective buyer much more achievable and the income streams less demanding (as the player costs will be much lower). It will mean the RFL get somebody who is interested in rugby running the club. It will mean the club can be rebuilt on a sound financial footing. Perhaps the Bulls supporters may even be able to have a large say in the running of the club, they certainly deserve some pay back after what they have been through.

If you work through the implications of this I think you will see what is likely to happen, and why the SL chairman have been happy to support it.

Very good thread with some intelligent points made, especially by Winslade's Offload and a few others.
My initial reaction to this news was one of disbelief and outrage, though having listened to the points in favour of why this action was taken, I can at least see the reasoning behind it to some degree.
However, what concerns me deeply is when decisions of such magnitude are taken purely on the basis of commercial viability, and where this route may lead us.
For example, let's say, hypothetically, that Bradford make the play-offs. The perceived wisdom of the man on the terraces (whether true or not) would be that it then becomes in the interests of the ruling body, or bodies, for Bradford to do as well as possible and to make as much money as possible. If your team plays Bradford, and is on the wrong end of a heap of refereeing decisions, maybe even loses as a result of a controversial decision, how are you, as a supporter, going to view that? Would you be inclined to go back and spend your hard-earned money again next season?
And taking the point about commercial viability to a wider extent, what if the Challenge Cup semi-finals had been, say, Wire v London and Wigan v Catalan. Would it be considered commercially non-viable to have a London v Catalan final, and would decisions be made accordingly to ensure that this didn't happen?
I'm not saying that would be the case, of course, I'm just saying that one massive can of worms is being opened here.
Maybe the gap between the fair world and the real world is actually a chasm.

The RFL have little to do with the refereeing though, other than setting the rules that referees should be following for every decision. If they were stupid, they might try telling the referees to swing a match one way or the other, but with 6 match officials the chances of this not reaching the press are very slim. Assuming controversial referee decisions even have any factor in the outcome of the match - you can give one team 2 or 3 tries they didn't deserve but it means nothing if the other team score 4 more anyway.

From the sounds of it the RFL have accepted that they will take a loss on this deal, to prevent this year's league from coming apart, so I don't think any major commercial decisions will come into it. Bradford will probably move into the Championship at the end of this or next season (maybe even at the end of the license period, but that seems unlikely) so they have a better chance of being bought, and another team can be brought in to make up the numbers (I think the league will stay at 14 at least until the end of the licensing).