FORUMS > Wakefield Trinity > Open Letter to the RFL 2nd Feb |
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| Quote: Adeybull "I'll help your case out then by disputing what you said there!
"Lots of clubs..."?
One club - Leeds - paid a proportion of their gate receipts (the amount paid by away fans, IIRC?) to the administrator. In mid-season. After the club had gone bust. Without which, the administrator said he would likely have shut the club down for good. Don't think you were ever in that situation?
Two other clubs - Wire and Hudds - paid about £10k in total (mostly from Wire) to our Supporters' Trust's Hardship Fund. This was used to pay coaching etc staff who had all been sacked by the administrators and were carrying on working for nothing. This enabled some limited donations to those guys to be made - still a fraction of what their normal salaries would have been. Don't thing you were ever in that situation? And pray you never are.
As always - and if the likes of Bren2k and their warped recollection of what actually happened don't like it, well there is only one version of the truth - all I seek to do is set the facts out and the record straight. However unpalatable the truth might be to those who would like to think it was otherwise.
Not putting you in that category, btw - far from it. I WOULD say that you have consistently been a voice of sanity and reason in a sea of distortion, misinformation and downright vitriol. But I realise that comments of that nature would destroy your credibility with most on here, so I won't.'"
shouldn't you be gearing up for another car washing session
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| You can always tell when some folk cannot argue objectively with what has been said
Instead of reasoned response, they instead resort to derision.
Speaks volumes about them, wouldn't you say?
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| Quote: Adeybull "So you agree that when Bulls went bust in 2012, we should only have been docked 4 points? Or maybe not had £1.3m Sky money confiscated, £100k of which came to your club?
Or that maybe you should have had £1.3m confiscated too?
No?
Well if the response is "our circumstances were different to Bradford's then" - and probably with full justification - then that's fine. They doubtless were.
But you surely cannot then object if anyone was to seek to apply a similar differentiation of circumstances now?'"
Half the cap is £800k. FFS, stop bleating on about losing half your Sky money. You suggested and accepted this condition.
Then you wiped the slate clean and knew you'd have to operate without. You haven't. You didn't. And you're in this situation again.
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| Quote: snowie "shouldn't you be gearing up for another car washing session'"
Class.....
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| Quote: Fully "Didn't Widnes also give some cash to you Adey? Think you missed them out.
Edit - Yes you didad nauseum[/i debates or whatever about the pledge campaign, but not to the specific I was setting the record straight about.
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| Quote: Fully "Half the cap is £800k. FFS, stop bleating on about losing half your Sky money. You suggested and accepted this condition.
Then you wiped the slate clean and knew you'd have to operate without. You haven't. You didn't. And you're in this situation again.'"
Bleating?
I was simply pointing out that you seek identical treatment when it suits, but not when it does not. As in the case of the Sky money confiscation.
You really think this confiscation was a suggestion by the prospective new owner? DO you REALLY believe that? It was the price exacted by a majority of the other clubs a sthe price for allowing the Bulls to retain a SL Licence. Even if they will not admit to it. A price they never exacted of you.
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| Quote: Adeybull "
Not putting you in that category, btw - far from it. I WOULD say that you have consistently been a voice of sanity and reason in a sea of distortion, misinformation and downright vitriol. But I realise that comments of that nature would destroy your credibility with most on here, so I won't.'"
Ha ha. Thanks for that.
I think I'm beyond help with my credibility so say it how you see it......
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| Quote: Adeybull "Bleating?
I was simply pointing out that you seek identical treatment when it suits, but not when it does not. As in the case of the Sky money confiscation.
You really think this confiscation was a suggestion by the prospective new owner? DO you REALLY believe that? It was the price exacted by a majority of the other clubs a sthe price for allowing the Bulls to retain a SL Licence. Even if they will not admit to it. A price they never exacted of you.'"
I'm a Cas fan, so they don't need to "exact" anything off of us.
Wakefield paid some of their creditors back. You didn't, hence the six point deduction and the financial penalty. I'm sure if Wakey had walked away from everything, they'd have got a similar punishment.
If your owner was against it, why didn't he oppose it; better still, why not come up with an alternative solution? Or why didn't he pay some of the creditors to appease the situation?
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| Quote: Adeybull "Bleating?
I was simply pointing out that you seek identical treatment when it suits, but not when it does not. As in the case of the Sky money confiscation.
You really think this confiscation was a suggestion by the prospective new owner? DO you REALLY believe that? It was the price exacted by a majority of the other clubs a sthe price for allowing the Bulls to retain a SL Licence. Even if they will not admit to it. A price they never exacted of you.'"
Was the Sky money halving not suggested by Omar Khan to redress the inequity that the RFL had paid Bradford £ 1.2m for the lease on Odsal, a lease that if the iconic stadium is preserved appears pretty much useless to anyone other than Bradford Bulls?
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| Quote: Fully "I'm a Cas fan, so they don't need to "exact" anything off of us.
Wakefield paid some of their creditors back. You didn't, hence the six point deduction and the financial penalty. I'm sure if Wakey had walked away from everything, they'd have got a similar punishment.
If your owner was against it, why didn't he oppose it; better still, why not come up with an alternative solution? Or why didn't he pay some of the creditors to appease the situation?'"
Sorry for responding to you as if you were a Trinity fan. I realise no apology can be sufficient, but you certainly have my profuse apologies.
I responded to your points because I thought they were reasoned and sensible. Just maybe you were a bit short on some of the facts - sadly all too common.
As it happens, I agree with you about the more severe points deducton. Although I think it would have been applied regardless, as a means of (they assumed) ensuring the Bulls could not make the playoffs. In the interests of the clarity that so many in here crave, it WOULD be helpful to know just what creditors were paid off though. SO we had some sort of precedent to judge against.
When we asked Khan & Sutcliffe why they accepted the condition, they said it was that or nothing. They seemed to say that paying off some creditors would have made no difference - some of the other SL clubs were adamant. I must admit, when the money was confiscated, my first assumption was that the RFL would use the money to pay off the creditors (it would have been sufficient to do that). I would have been at ease with that, as I said at the time. I was pretty staggered when it was not so applied. Even more so when I learned that it was being shared out amongst the other clubs, increasing the differnetial to £3/4m p.a.
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| Quote: Adeybull "You really think this confiscation was a suggestion by the prospective new owner? DO you REALLY believe that? It was the price exacted by a majority of the other clubs a sthe price for allowing the Bulls to retain a SL Licence. Even if they will not admit to it. A price they never exacted of you.'"
My understanding is that the reduction in Sky money was supported by other clubs because of their anger at the underhand tactics used by the RFL in their secret bail-out for the Bulls, and the subsequent lies and spin they used to try to cover it up. The club chairmen were hacked off about that, and rightly so.
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| You know the guy who stands in the street with the 'End of the World is Nigh' billboard that most people ignore and some howl derision at.........
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| Quote: GiantDee "Was the Sky money halving not suggested by Omar Khan to redress the inequity that the RFL had paid Bradford £ 1.2m for the lease on Odsal, a lease that if the iconic stadium is preserved appears pretty much useless to anyone other than Bradford Bulls?'"
Not at all. Its not the only ground the RFL bought either, remember.
The RFL get £78k p.a. in rent. A perfectly acceptable return compared to money in the bank. More to the point, the peppercorn head lease is actually quite valuable. If they were to surrender it back to the Council, so the council could redevelop the site (a prime location just off the motorway) I would expect they could demand a good price. It would almost certainly suit the council for the RFL to do just that (and force the Bulls to Valley Parade, something they tried before).
If it was such a poor deal for the RFL and a good deal for the Bulls, why did the likes of Caisley state publically that the sale to the RFL was at a scandalous underprice, and did their best to see if they could overturn it or take action against Hood for selling it?
Maybe they, and/or others, deduced that various parties showing interest in buying the Bulls were after the site not the club, and planned to move the club to VP and get the council to buy them out of the head lease? At a big profit, no doubt? Or else allow them to develop the site for other use, again with potential for big profit?
FWIW, my own view is that the RFL win in this whatever happens. No way will they come out of this showing any kind of a loss. I'll not agree with Caisley et al that it was a deal so biased in favour of the RFL it was untrue - end of the day, the RFL held all the cards and Bulls virtually none. But I DO think they saw an opportunity and took it.
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| Quote: bren2k "My understanding is that the reduction in Sky money was supported by other clubs because of their anger at the underhand tactics used by the RFL in their secret bail-out for the Bulls, and the subsequent lies and spin they used to try to cover it up. The club chairmen were hacked off about that, and rightly so.'"
You could well be right. Although there were plenty of precedents for the RFL loaning clubs money. This whole loan business, and then taking over the stadium for what was at best an extra £400k or so, was scandalously underhand. I made a total fool of myself congratulating the then-board on what seemed to be a far-from-ideal but necessary deal in the middle of a recession, only to later learn about the loan. And the scale of it. So you'll get no argument form me now on that subject.
Fact remains though that, for whatever the reason, the other clubs were determined to punish the new owners for the sins of the old. I belive some of them were of the view "I have put many milions into my club. Let someone do the same with the Bulls." Except, no-one stepped forward to do so
This demonstrates one big difference between why the Bulls were punished far far more heavily than Wakey. And for reaons that are hard to argue with. I don't think anyone in their right mind would ever argue Wakey should have suffered a financial penalty like Bulls did.
Equally, did any other club become a football between two warring groups of shareholders? I remain firmly of the view that the loss to creditors was far more because of how the adminsitration was brought about than it would have been had the shareholders worked together. Indeed, we will never know if the club could have been saved from administration had the then-board been allowed to continue. THEY certainly believed it would. But that can only ever be an opinion.
But it also demonstrates why no two situations are the same. And therefore why, when demanding equality fo treatment, thay really requires equality of circumstance too. And, unfortunately, none of us know to what extent that is the case or otherwise, nor is it ever likley to be made public. The only ones who will are the RFL, who are tasked with determining what action to take.
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