martinwildbull wrote:
to quote you specifically: There is no rule that allows (or disallows) any such appeal. But if you say the a right of "appeal" by someone (the new owners) who have never actually had a ruling made against them, then please refer me to that rule. If you can, I will of course gladly accept its existence.
Here it is:
4.7 In the event of a member ceasing to be a member upon notice from the Company by virtue of Acquisition, Change of Control or Insolvency Event, the Board, at its absolute discretion, shall have the right to readmit the member or admit a new member as a member on any terms as it sees fit, which for the avoidance of doubt, may include financial, administrative and/or sporting sanctions. In the event of membership continuing the Board may determine that membership shall be deemed to continue to subsist as if the member had not ceased to be a member at all. The Board will from time to time set out policy for the exercise of its discretion but is not bound by such policy or precedent decided under such policy or previous policy and the Board shall be entitled to amend any policy with immediate effect
…
Taking it all together, a new member is still "the member" as if they had never had membership withdrawn.
Thanks, and having read it, I can understand how you have misinterpreted it like that, as it takes some crunching. However, there are in fact, two alternatives.
The old member – OKB - ceases to be a member due to insolvency event. This is a common factor in each alternative. Then:
1. If the way things pan out (for example a CVA or whatever) OKB remains the owners, then they can be readmitted. That, and only that, is “membership continuing”. OKB used to have membership. Their membership ceases. They then get membership back, and the board
can (but doesn’t have to) deem that the membership is deemed to have been continuous, “as if the member had not ceased to be a member at all”.
OR
2. The old member (OKB) can not be saved. So a brand new member applies for and is admitted. This is fine, as the rule says the Board can “admit a new member”. But to have the same effect as in (1), you’d need the wording to be extended to something like:
“In the event of membership continuing the Board may determine that membership shall be deemed to continue to subsist as if the member had not ceased to be a member at all. In the event of membership not continuing but the member being replaced by a new member, the new membership shall be deemed to subsist as if the new member was for this purpose the same entity as the ceased member”.
However, that is not included, for the simple reason that it would be pointless. There is only one point to the rule and that is, if OKB had an insolvency event, and thus ceased to be a member, but sorted itself out and wanted to carry on, then if the Board agreed they could simply deem a continuation which would eliminate the need for OKB and the RFL to go through the entire application for admission process.
And the reason that would be superfluous is because any new owner would never be “deemed” a member, any new owner must in every case apply for membership and complete that process.
Hope this clarifies.
I myself quoted from this rule some weeks ago, when I asked if anyone knew where I could find the “Policy” for exercise of discretion but nobody seems to know. At any rate that’s not important as they clearly can do whatever they want including ignopring the policy or amending it on the fly.
I also quoted the rule on another earlier thread, in the first administration, in the discussion about how sanctions could be applied to a new owner (it was one of the regularly recurring arguments that there is some “club” that exists independently of owners, and some buffoon thought e had checkmated me with something like: Aha!! But if the new owners and the club are not separate entities, the RFL wouldn’t be able to apply sanctions to the new owners, would they?!” The answer was of course that no, indeed they wouldn’t, and that’s precisely why the rules give them that power, which they wouldn’t otherwise have:
“…admit a new member as a member on any terms as it sees fit, which for the avoidance of doubt, may include financial, administrative and/or sporting sanctions.“
Sorry that this post is stretching to unholy length, but obviously what SHOULD have happened is that when BB2014 backed out, the PROPOSED sanctions against them should not have been confirmed, and the RFL should have considered what sanctions to give to BBNL. Then we wouldn’t have this mess.
It is all very well apologists for the RFL saying they had to act quickly, because otherwise too much league points uncertainty, but the argument falls down immediately as now the decision was entrely predictably appealed against, that meant and means there is no certainty until whenever the appeal comes to be heard.
Instead what they appear to have done is imposed sanctions on BB2014. That is thinking about it probably technically possible, since as I understand it, BB2014 were operating under a sort of temporary licence or membership, if you like, but the fact is, they did not own the company. That is why BBNL could not appeal, as the points sanction was not imposed on them. The administrator, who was obviously effectively acting as interim owner of OKB in administration, was perfectly entitled to lodge an appeal by OKB against any sanction imposed on OKB. But the problem I have with that is, no sanction was imposed on OKB. (I accept that it could have been, but so far as I am aware, no such event occurred; on the contrary, the RFL went to great pains to say that they hated BB2014’s plans, and as BB2014 couldn’t do any better, (although MM said they did do better, but that weirdly the RFL refused to consider some revised new improved plan) they were going to be docked 6 points and kept in special measures.
What could OKB appeal about, if no sanction was imposed on them?
I can probably just about conceive a highly artificial contrivance where the administrator of OKB, who undoubtedly would have the right to act in OKB’s shoes and lodge an appeal, signed over the legal rights to allow someone else (BBNL) to take over the conduct of the appeal, but it would be highly unsatisfactory since OKB never appear to have been sanctioned so have nothing to appeal about.
martinwildbull wrote:
It therefore follows that the member can be penalized when one person is in control of the member, and under the general rules of discipline and appeal tribunals, can appeal against that penalty even though there has been a change of control of "the member".
It doesn’t. There was no change of control of member. (Well, there may have been if we get into the did-he-didn’t-he of the sale of OKB shares from OK to MM and RW, but that isn’t the subject here). It was not a continuing member, controlling shares in which changed hands. BBNL was a brand new member. As indeed was, or would have been, BB2014.
