M@islebugs wrote:
You've actually been talking some sense lately. Been ill?
Two points
M@islebugs wrote:
1, I don't have an inside track.
That much is clear.
M@islebugs wrote:
I saw everything that you saw and concluded correctly.
Tosh. This "claim" means nothing. I say I "concluded correctly" too. Equally meaningless.
M@islebugs wrote:
However, one group of people did have an inside track. The RFL audited the club as part of its SL license and then Peter Hood came and asked them for 700k (presuming the RFL didn't make an unsolicited offer). This should have given them grounds for seeking further information/input. Surely you must see this as a serious failing or at least a point in this story where something 'different' might have happened.
I am no accountant but I do not believe that the RFL carries out any sort of "audit" in the sense you mean. And my problem with this claim is that the answer to your implicit question would be that the RFL knew the Bulls were effectively trading whilst insolvent but loaned them money. I don't buy it.
I don't see any serious failing on the part of the RFL. We know so little about the smallprint of the deals but what little has emerged seems to only indicate a governing body trying to help keep afloat a club with cashflow issues. Not for the first time, not for the last.
Of course "something different" might have happened. The RFL might have refused to do anything and the club might have gone rapidly down the pan, for one thing. Would you have been happy then?
M@islebugs wrote:
2, There were alternatives. Martyn Sadler knew of at least three consortium who were interested in buying the Bulls who (according to Guilfoyle) withdrew when they saw the books.
That is a contradiction in terms. Someone who is not interested in buying is no sort of "alternative" that I recognise! Anyway, who were these consortia? Were they even worth tuppence? Or just pie-in-the-sky merchants?
"The books". What "books"? If you mean they saw the size of the debts, then that doesn't wash, as whatever deal they advanced, they buy from the administrator free from debts. So what else do you mean? (Genuine question - if you mean it wasn't being managed properly pre-admin -that would surely be irrelevant to any new purchaser who would surely be putting in their own team)
M@islebugs wrote:
Your points about the nature of 'conditions' in these negotiations are well made but both parties are still using the term 'condition' with the regards to the purchase/sale of the lease.
if they want to continue to cause needless confusion, what can anyone do? Presumably it suits the RFL (who have already pretty much admitted that they don't feel at liberty to give anything like the whole story) to nuttily blame "conditions" rather than have to make decisions and give simple answers to simple questions.
M@islebugs wrote:
The points stands, had their been intervention sooner when the RFL had grounds there is a reasonable chance the situation could have been brought to light sooner and the scale of the disaster would almost certainly not be as great as it now is
WHAT INTERVENTION though? Who would have intervened? How would they have done it? If there was anyone able to, why did they not do it?
What is the scale of the disaster? Can you give me a link to the figures? All I've seen is two wildly contrasting scenarios advanced via the press through Hood, and Caisley's appointees, seasoned by yet more disinformation from the bank. What was the scale of the disaster then, and how is it worse now? What money have we spent since, that we could have avoided spending?
Bottom line is your view seems to me to be just a bowl of wishful thinking, sprinkled with hindsight. In reality, it was up to the (what we now know to have been) warring factions within the club to bring the situation to a head and they all failed to act. The majority of the blame is on those who were running the club, a very substantial share of the blame is with the others who were not only seemingly washing their hands of it all, but allegedly not even prepared to meet and talk.
And to me, (not that there is now any point to this navel-gazing) therein lies the answer to your claims; at that time the Board and shareholders were hopelessly and irreconcileably divided, poles apart, and seemingly remain so. Given that paralyzing situation, I don't see ANYTHING that could have been done, unless that lot had done it. Between them, they owned the club, and without their agreement, nobody else had any way of getting in.
