Duckman wrote:
I know. Which is what Im getting at, the rfl sanctions are if you had the cash somewhere but didnt pay at the time of going into admin. So Admin is unavoidable at the time of admin because of no cash - obviously it was avoidable if we had the cash or paid on time, but we didnt and we didnt, and i didnt think i needed to type that.
I didn't understand your point then, sorry, but I still don't think it's quite that. It's complex from the RFL's POV. If a business is in trouble but is quickly disposed of in a pre-pack (as very nearly happened with us) then whilst that's perfectly legal, it leaves two headaches in the case of an RL club
1. There is a virtual ongoing entity, namely the sporting club, playing in a league, it isn't a legal entity, but is the only bit that the fans are bothered about, and the owners of each entity look for something like a level playing field from the RFL. So it may be perfectly legal for someone to acquire the business in a prepack and write off a load of debt, but if the result is that the sporting club side of it thus steals a competitive march on the other clubs, you can't really run a league like that. Hence the separate topic of sporting sanctions, as well as financial sanctions on a new owner despite them having nothing to do with the old owners or the losses they caused.
2. The RFL also have the bigger picture to look at, namely the status of the sport in government circles, for funding etc purposes. Appearances are maybe not everything but count for a lot, and if a club is seen to blithely just carry on, while the taxpayer gets shafted, then there may be longer term repercussions for the sport in general.
In that context it isn't so much the going into administration (although that in itself reflects badly on the game and is pisspoor PR) it is how you come out of it. So for example in an ideal scenario you might end up with a CVA where everybody gets paid all or most of what they are owed but over a period of time. That would mitigate (but not eliminate) the damage.
But in this case, there is no CVA, instead the business side has been sold to a brand new company. THe old company has gone tits and will eventually be liquidated. The administrator will distribute whatever pennies remain between creditors but they will all lose out heavily and that includes HMRC.
The new owners have no duty to pay anybody else anything, they pay the administrator and that is that. The RFL have no duty to admit them to RL or SL and so it is a case of, you could say, negotiation and persuasion. Here it becomes tricky for the RFL. They obviously don't want to lose a team like the Bulls from SL for reasons even our enemies secretly understand, but have the wier issues to consider too. And so they attempt to get some sort of deal, if we let you take the Bulls forward in SL, what are ya gonna do about the old creditors?
i will be very interested to learn what the answer was. It is interesting that nothing has been said so far. Had this been a deal that was good news for old creditors, I'd have expected both RFL and the new owners to be basking in some good publicity and for that reason I doubt it is.
Which then brings me back to my hobby horse, we know that the current price of going tits included the new owners effectively being fined a year's distribution, but are the RFL going to be consistent and do the same (well, have done the same, as any agreement must by definition already have been reached in writing); or was that penalty just a one off for OKB; or is there to be some sort of fudge? And have the RFL insisted on Green paying back the advances made by RFL to keep the club going, as they said they would?
Or is the detail simply going to be kept confidential, and swept under the Red Hall carpets?
