Then lets have a rule that acts as a deterrent to, and punishment for it, rather than what we have now which is an utterly pointless token gesture against the wrong people.

So what do you suggest ?

Blacklisting and banning of any persons involved in taking a club in to admin (in a real decision making capacity, not the marketing manager, programme seller or tea lady) and the holder of the golden share to be personally liable for a £100k fine should the club go in to administration.

Although the blacklisting aspect is perfectly sensible, the 100k fine would be somewhat more problematic and in most cases, would barely be a slap on the wrist.

In the recent cases of admin, the main people involved have probably lost in excess of the figure that you mention so, this is no deterrent.



Also, now that we are back to promotion and relegation a 100k fine compared to the potential gain (of a SL place), doesn't even register.



Perhaps, if "the golden ticket" is sacrificed for failing members, maybe there would be fewer cases of insolvency ?

Glad to see you are keeping up your utter bollox spouting standard, but nowhere have I tried to "excuse Bradford's self destruction".



You just want to pretend that nobody else and nothing else was in any way involved, though. In the actual real world, the collapse was, factually, the result of many factors. It is reasonable to discuss them. You introduced the emotive "blame".





I'm sure you would, but that's just the sort of pointless purely academic "bet" that adds literally nothing to any discussion.

its an additional £100k loss. It is an added deterrent.



There is no potential gain if you are in admin.



it wouldnt really matter, once in admin, the club and all of its assets is gone. You dont own it any longer, anything you do to it will be irrelevant.

Sorry Smokey, I haven't articulated my last post sufficiently.



Ok the 100k may act as a deterrent, however we both know that people with serious cash can usually find some way around stumping up cash (unless this is a bond given in advance).



The potential gain I mentioned would be for clubs striving for promotion, which we have seen both in RL (pre SL) and in other sports, chasing the rainbow etc.



Finally, what happens to the golden ticket when a club enters admin, are you suggesting that it should be revoked, or passed on to any new owner that may but "the club" from an administrator.

In most circumstances, outside of pre-packs, we should treat the new owners with a clean slate. They are, after all, people risking their money to try and save one of our struggling clubs. The least we cn do is not deliberately make that more difficult for them. So yes, i would pass on anything to the new owners.



I would question why a person with 'serious money' was putting a club in to admin. The debts we see take down most of our clubs arent huge, they arent Enron levels. They are generally in the hundreds of thousands - £2m range. Which already isnt a huge hit for those with 'serious money'.



With regards to what you mention about P+R, as I said this simply highlights a failing of P+R and what a dumb idea it was to return to it, even dumber to return in this format. But anyway, it leaves us in no different position to now. Last season London and Salford would have been relegated, not Bradford. Not deducting points later doesn’t affect that. Those without serious money would be pretty upset at needing to pay £100k of their own money to put a club into admin .

The clean slate is a problem in the sporting arena, as many people would perceive that the "old" club could gain substantial advantage by going pop and "starting again" with a clean slate.

Lets say that one of the Championship clubs borrowed heavily and over paid its players, in order to gain promotion to the top flight and then, having gone into admin (albeit with a different owner), began life in SL.

They would have a serious cash advantage over, both their promotion rivals AND the incumbent SL clubs and equally likely, they would have been promoted in place of a "better run" solvent club.



Equally, a SL club whose slate is wiped clean, would have a serious cash advantage over it's SL rivals, either at the top end, or lower end of the division, Hence a points deduction seems a perfectly reasonable "punishment".

Why should going into admin allow ANY sporting advantage, it's just plain wrong.

No they dont. The only cash the new company has is the cash the new owner is prepared to put in. There is no advantage to this conveyed by having been in administration



You seem to assume that admin is some painless way of clearing debts. It isn’t. It is the final option that no-one would want to take.



There seems to be this pernicious idea within the arguments for a points deduction that the new and old owner would somehow be working together. There are laws against that kind of thing, its not something RL needs to worry about, the justice system already does it for us.



Is there anyone at all who thinks Bradford started this season at an advantage because of admin? If so, they are clearly nuts.



You also seem to be suggesting that clubs would take the risk to get promoted, get promoted, but then immediately go bust anyway. Why is someone going to do that?



The alternative is that in your example, the owner of the club has willingly flushed his money down the toilet to get his team promoted in the hope that someone else will come in and take it on debt free afterwards. That again seems crazy.

I agree the RFL should rightly be concerned about HMRC being shafted by RL clubs, but so should the clubs themselves. Part of the reason for the Bulls' failure was the distribution penalty, and the clubs took part of this cash for themselves. Are they still banking the cheques, while the HMRC whistles? I suggest so.



We now hear that the RFL are pursuing Omar Khan personally for full repayment of ALL distribution ever paid to OK Bulls. I didn't see any report that if they got it, they would pay it straight to HMRC / creditors and on past form fully expect that any money so recovered would just be divvied again between the rest of the clubs, while they berate the Bulls for shafting creditors they will blatantly be keeping money that should clearly otherwise have gone to creditors.



But I'm sure that HMRC will be heartened by the PG the RFL got out of Khan to repay all distribution moneys, despite HMRC not seeing a penny of it. Kudos to the RFL for looking after the important people.

Although I may be "completely nuts", any business bought from an administrator, is bought at a "reduced rate" and it would certainly be cheaper to buy Bradford from the administrator, than it would to start over, so there clearly is some sort of advantage.



Of course no club is going to deliberately try and go bust, just to start again with a clean slate but, back in the real world, it happens and when a club/member is in the top flight, unless there was some kind of expulsion clause in the constitution of the sport, the new owner "gains advantage", if only the advantage of "the golden ticket" ??