Quote Duckman="Duckman"Problem is I guess, working with creditors is not, paying back creditors fully, or we'd have said that, so I guess we are paying back, but maybe not fully, hence a mitigated penalty rather than 6 points, or worse.
FWIW I have always thought we should have incurred a deduction, whatever the technicalities of the rules (or lack of them). Whatever the precedence and level of working with creditors. To have been the only club to avoid a points deduction upon entering admin, in a relegation season, would not have seemed right to me. '"
Although you get to the point, you also miss it. We might be the first club to not get a points deduction but if we do get one, we will be the first club to whom it potentially makes a hugely significant difference.
A 4 point penalty last time, which was of the same importance as anyone else's previous points penalty, meant we lost out in one away game in the playoffs and that's about as bad as it ever got for anyone, the others just finished a bit worse off in league table pojnts than they otherwise would have and that was it. Big deal.
However this year a points deduction COULD be a million pound fine, if it results in relegation. I well understand, of course, that tere are many enemies that want us to be disbanded, or failing that, to start in the Pennine League, but even they would have to concede that this particular sanction's teeth have gone from maximum slap -on-the-wrist to possible death sentence.
A points penalty this year, then, is a very different beast to anything any other club has faced. Comparing 4 points this year with any previous year is thus like comparing a community service order with 25 years in jail. If we got 4 points, it is thus an incomparably greater sanction, potentially, than anyone else ever faced. A reasonable RFL would bear that in mind. Of course, the trolls also know this, but deliberately choose to ignore the obvious point - calling for "equal treatment, which is the most risible twisting of all.
But if that doesn't kill us off, maybe another million quid in withheld distribution money will do the job.
Quote Duckman="Duckman"And for all the apparent unfairness, ultimately, as a club (read succession of owners, not fans) we only have ourselves to blame for our current predicament, to go from World Champions in 2006, to where we are now in 2014 is an impressive self inflicted death spiral. Hopefully this is the bottom and we can get through this season on move onwards and upwards.'"
That's the other problem. The fans and the true club, that is the one that plays rugby league in Bradford while we watch, doesn't exist and so the RFL can only sanction what does exist and is under their control, which is the new ownership. If the new club had risen out of the old by way of a management buyout prepack or was otherwise directly connected to the people who ruined it then you could see the fairness but in this case that's not so. The effect is to potentially punish all Bradford's fans by penalising the team they watch but we have to accept that practically there is no other way of sanctioning anyone and that although there is no point in punishing someone who has done nothing wrong, there is an element also I'm sure of the RFL having to "be seen" to be doing something eg by Sport England, HMRC etc.
But what is particularly unsavoury is a small number of trolls baying loudly for blood just because the club went into administration, as if that in itself was a heinous crime, and even if nobody lost money they would be just as strident.
