Thursday 10 August 2017 18:02, UK
Are you a gambler?
I have a friend who backed a horse last Saturday to win at Goodwood. It was an outsider and not many people gave it a chance, but it won at 33-1. I know that selecting a 'winner' isn't easy but the news this week about Bradford's relegation made me wonder if we've picked the wrong team to be in the Championship this season. Would Toronto have been a better option? Or should Whitehaven have been put back in there?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing but the best administrators in sport don't need it as they get nine out of 10 decisions right. However, we're almost at the stage now where we've got nine out of the last 10 decisions wrong about Bradford.
Twenty years ago the Bulls won their first 20 games of the season. Twenty years later it's all gone wrong for them again. It's clear that there's a rugby league club in there somewhere, it's just a shame that the passion and enthusiasm of their fans hasn't been matched by the acumen of the administrators.
There is no point going all the way back to the start of their problems either, I would need to write a book not an article to cover that. The three administrations that they have had since 2012 are enough to tell you that we have made mistake after mistake with what was the biggest club and possibly brand for the sport at its height.
I met up with Brian Carney and rugby league journalist' Rod Studd for a coffee this week and wanted to double check that I wasn't alone in thinking that we keep getting it wrong when it comes to Bradford.
We allowed the Bulls to play in Super League under new owners in 2012 but only gave them half of the money that the other teams got. This was a bad idea.
We then supported the next new owner but things did not go well and they went into administration again. This then turned into liquidation.
We then had new owners from down under, in what was a new club, but allowed them to stay in the Championship, when the rules state that new teams need to start off in the lowest league, like Toronto did. Worse still, we then gave them a 12-point deduction which made it virtually impossible for them to get promoted. If they were a new club, which is what I think they were legally, why did we penalise them by deducting 12 competition points?
The RFL state that the season tickets that the club had sold was one of the reasons why they remained in the Championship but it would strike me that it was more to do with the fact that the other Championship clubs wanted them in their league for the number of fans that they could bring to matches. The RFL say that they could have lost these fans if the Bulls had been forced to start in League 1. The other clubs wanted them in the Championship for their own financial benefit.
It must also have been a conflict of interest for the RFL as "landlords" of the stadium where the Bulls play. I wonder if this was considered by the RFL when the decision was made?
Whatever was considered has only prolonged the pain for the Bulls. I only hope that they start next season in League 1 and start to work their way back up the tables.
The game should learn its lesson and ensure any club that goes into liquidation (or admin) is relegated to the bottom tier. That would act as a deterrent to a gambler's approach to financial management of clubs and lessen the chances of a similar scenario unfolding ever again.
