One thing which has been a thorn in our side for several years now has been the "helping hand" of the RFL. To paraphrase Kevin Keegan, I would love it, just love it, if somebody beats them.
From my perspective, as the new season loomed, the RFL dithered and prevaricated, and set in stone conditions for any new club, not caring a jot that by blocking the normal process of administration in this way, any new club would be almost strangled at birth, as kickoff approached.
Now, the RFL admitting any new entrant to the party is entirely a matter for them. As are any T&Cs attached. None of that (in my view) is relevant to the tribunal case, as it is simply a case of whether a new party wanting to play a team in the RFL's comps., is or is not given a licence.
But at the same time, this process severely interfered with the administration, because normally, it would be the administrator who weighed up buyers, and did a deal with the most favourable.
You can't of course escape the fact that, if I'm wanting to buy my way in to play a RL team in the leagues, I need to be accepted by the RFL before I'm gonna pay my money. Or make my purchase strictly conditional on that happening. To that extent, so far, the condition is reasonable. The administrator can't say who the RFL must admit, and the RFL can't tell the administrator how to do his job.
But this refers to what we all used to call the"fit and proper person test", basically the RFL have a (rightful) veto against the true "owner" or "main man" and have no legal obligation to accept anybody as owner. Crucially, it isn't going further, and interfering directly in the future running of the business that the new owner would be operating.
Here, things seem to have gone much beyond that, here, the RFL seem to have basically told the new owners that they could play as Bradford Bulls, they would have to play in the Championship, they would start at minus 12 points, they would have to play at Odsal and take over the sub-lease of Odsal and pay rent to the RFL, etc.
In other words, the RFL were engineering the situation in which "Bradford Bulls" would remain a team in the Championship and play under that name and in the same league and in the same place as the old one.
I guess that the legal effect of the extent of this involvement is what is at the heart of the case.
What should have happened in my opinion is
a) administrator picks the best bid
b) prospective new owner passes fit and proper test
c) the new team starts in C1
I assume that had this happened, there would have been a TUPE situation and indeed how much better that would have been for us as a club rather than everybody being sacked.
Instead, we don't really know exactly what did happen, but we do know that the administrator was very unhappy at the RFL's "unauthorised" involvement, and we do know now that, contrary to the impression widely given, the old club was not actually in liquidation; we do know that the business was not bought out of administration from the administrator; but that many of its assets were bought and sold by the RFL (not including staff contracts). We do know that ChaLo negotiated new deals with each member of staff, starting from scratch, so if nothing else changes then all their accrued employment terms and rights would be gone. Yet you're still playing for Bradford Bulls in the same shirt, at the same place, even in the same league, as you were before.
What the Tribunal will make of that merry mess, only they will know, but by getting so heavily involved and interfering directly in the administration process, the RFL have only themselves to blame if a legal case can be made holding them to account for the effect their involvement had on the employment situation of the individuals concerned which, let's not forget, is what the case is all about. The effect of what happened seems to have been to take what happened to the former employees completely out of the remit of the administrator, even though the old business remained in administration, and TUPE was enacted to put a stop to people avoiding workers' rights by paper manoeuvrings.
