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WHATS GOING ON AT ODSAL


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2 hours ago, Northern Eel said:

Meanwhile, the RFL reveal that they have not yet received an application from Bradford to use the Dewsbury ground and that the move remains subject to approval. If it wasn't such a pathetic mess, it would be laughable. 

Then, in another turn, Park Avenue come out and say they will leave their ground share offer open for a limited period, and if the Bulls don't take it up, will begin their own professional Rugby League club in the BD postcode. Bulls RL of Bradford?

BPA were of course originally an RL club. What goes around comes around.

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This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it.

For a start Bradford could save £250k by going part time. Rumoured budget of both Bradford and York is £400k and £150k respectively, shows a team can perform on a lower budget. 

As with my post before, can they not just use the main stand and corporate stand, leave the rest of the ground as it is while they sort out a long term plan?

I wouldn’t like to think how much a ‘subsidised’ bus to Dewsbury will cost bearing in mind AC’s pricing structure at Odsal lately.

And what the hell’s a ‘boutique’ stadium??!

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There have been some dodgy dealings over the years from people at the RFL and the Bulls that has got us to this point. Its a shame that there will never be an investigation in to a number of things that have happened. I dont like the Bulls. Mainly due to the way they acted in the past and the way many of its so called fans (and Officials) have looked down on clubs like Fax, Fev, Keighley etc. But the fans of the Bulls (and the game) have been treated badly over the years. But answers should be given over many things including the role of Nigel Wood and the RFL over Odsal and the people running the Bulls. Chambers comes across as somebody who talks well but what exactly is his plan for Bradford Bulls to play in Bradford? How exactly is he going to build the Bulls to play in Super League when playing outside the City?

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8 hours ago, Amber Avenger said:

Also a big drawback in using the site for landfill or waste iiirc is that due to the new housing development nearby I think it would actually be illegal to use Odsal for that purpose now due to the proximity. Maybe not back then, unsure of dates 

Earth will be remediated and/or removed with inert materials coming in.  That operation alone would be quite lucrative.

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1 hour ago, AB Knight said:

As with my post before, can they not just use the main stand and corporate stand, leave the rest of the ground as it is while they sort out a long term plan?

I believe this has been explored before, however it really isn't as simple as that unfortunately. They aren't spending £500k a year just on making sure the terraces are workable (if you've been recently, that's extremely obvious!). There is an old post either on here on RLFans about how much it cost to get the toilets behind the main stand up to scratch, and the costs were ludicrous  

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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54 minutes ago, RugbyLeagueMan said:

He means a traditional suburban stadium, not a clinical one like at Salford or Warrington.

A! Traditional as in outside urinals, a single and blocked WC, leaking roof, crumbling terraces, wooden seats.......

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2 hours ago, AB Knight said:

This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it.

For a start Bradford could save £250k by going part time. Rumoured budget of both Bradford and York is £400k and £150k respectively, shows a team can perform on a lower budget. 

As with my post before, can they not just use the main stand and corporate stand, leave the rest of the ground as it is while they sort out a long term plan?

I wouldn’t like to think how much a ‘subsidised’ bus to Dewsbury will cost bearing in mind AC’s pricing structure at Odsal lately.

And what the hell’s a ‘boutique’ stadium??!

I think this is the thing that irks people. They knew the costs of Odsal so should have adjusted the playing staff budget accordingly just like every other team has to do but Bradford been Bradford have simply spent more than they should have once again. Its hard to feel sympathy for the club but I do feel for their fans once again.

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2 hours ago, AB Knight said:

This is all a bit of a mess isn’t it.

For a start Bradford could save £250k by going part time. Rumoured budget of both Bradford and York is £400k and £150k respectively, shows a team can perform on a lower budget. 

As with my post before, can they not just use the main stand and corporate stand, leave the rest of the ground as it is while they sort out a long term plan?

I wouldn’t like to think how much a ‘subsidised’ bus to Dewsbury will cost bearing in mind AC’s pricing structure at Odsal lately.

And what the hell’s a ‘boutique’ stadium??!

I'd wager that £400k is an underestimate and probably a significant one.

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Odsal even when filled in can not be used for social housing nor I believe any business which is going to employ hundreds of personnel. The grounds and the surrounding areas,i.e. the local Council Tip has been inspected time and time again and has been found not suitable for building due to the many gases now in the ground which have accumulated after many,many years of being used for the local tipping of household waste, etc,etc,etc. So as one poster has already stated whst will the R.F.L. and Bradford Council do now? Let it fall into further disrepair by leaving a great big hole in the ground for the next twenty years, remember Bradford has a history of this in the actual Town Centre.In this mornings local press the owner of B.P.A ,a millionaire oil man has promised there will be a R.L. team back in Bradford in the next couple of years which seems to me that talks are still ongoing with all parties. Also a nice little reminder that Bradford was once a great City for sport, two  professional football league clubs, Bradford Park Avenue and City, a Yorkshire cricket venue, a World Speedway stadium, two Greyhound venues.Now what have we got ,Valley Parade where League 2 football is currently being played with not much chance of being any higher.Bradford League cricket which was known as the best league in the country, gone, Bradford Central League cricket ,basically the second tier of the Bradford League, gone, Schools, football,rugby,cricket, gone.Airedale Harriers Athletics ,gone.What have we now in their place, Qaeed Azam cricket league, some sort of Kabbadi League.Tells its own story.And please let us not turn it into a Party Political story. All other towns in the U.K. are suffering the same,have they all lost all of their sports facilities and teams? I think I know the answer to that.

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25 minutes ago, The Blues Ox said:

I think this is the thing that irks people. They knew the costs of Odsal so should have adjusted the playing staff budget accordingly just like every other team has to do but Bradford been Bradford have simply spent more than they should have once again. Its hard to feel sympathy for the club but I do feel for their fans once again.

Everyone: Bradford should cut their cloth

Bradford: Moves out of prohibitively costly stadium

Everyone: No, we meant get rid of your players

Problem is, stadiums like Odsal don't get any cheaper to maintain so the solution can't always be "get rid of your players", because by that logic, we'll be in the Pennine League in 2030 but paying millions a year to maintain the stadium. Not sure where the balance is really. Well I am, and it's somewhere in the past year or two and it's now tipping point.

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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27 minutes ago, Amber Avenger said:

Everyone: Bradford should cut their cloth

Bradford: Moves out of prohibitively costly stadium

Everyone: No, we meant get rid of your players

Problem is, stadiums like Odsal don't get any cheaper to maintain so the solution can't always be "get rid of your players", because by that logic, we'll be in the Pennine League in 2030 but paying millions a year to maintain the stadium. Not sure where the balance is really. Well I am, and it's somewhere in the past year or two and it's now tipping point.

But having atleast 22 FT players and paying good money to sign junior players is also a big reason why the Bulls have no money. There is no need for the Bulls to have 22 FT players or pay out as much as they have. And the big wage bill has got them where?

Odsal may cost a fortune, but that was clear when Chambers and co agreed this deal with the RFL! And it was Chambers that agreed to the deal with the RFL regarding Odsal. His poor management has helped get the Bulls to this stage, yet he is trying to blame everybody but himself.

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2 minutes ago, Lounge Room Lizard said:

But having atleast 22 FT players and paying good money to sign junior players is also a big reason why the Bulls have no money. There is no need for the Bulls to have 22 FT players or pay out as much as they have. And the big wage bill has got them where?

Odsal may cost a fortune, but that was clear when Chambers and co agreed this deal with the RFL! And it was Chambers that agreed to the deal with the RFL regarding Odsal. His poor management has helped get the Bulls to this stage, yet he is trying to blame everybody but himself.

Seems so obvious doesn’t it.  Simple maths on incomings and outgoings.  But the Bulls were already at a ‘stage’ and a few before that.  Chambers will carry the can for this episode and his public comments in media haven’t won him many friends.

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Chambers refused to sign the deal concerning the lease as it was stipulated that the Bulls would have to pay the maintenance costs along with rental, council taxes etc,etc.The deal had already been signed by previous incumbents but that deal runs out Sept. 1st or so I am led to believe. In normal rental practice surely the Owner of the site should pay for the maintenance, but ,hey ho, never mind,it will make a lot of so called R.L. fans happy that the Bulls are in trouble again.

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10 minutes ago, fairfolly said:

Chambers refused to sign the deal concerning the lease as it was stipulated that the Bulls would have to pay the maintenance costs along with rental, council taxes etc,etc.The deal had already been signed by previous incumbents but that deal runs out Sept. 1st or so I am led to believe. In normal rental practice surely the Owner of the site should pay for the maintenance, but ,hey ho, never mind,it will make a lot of so called R.L. fans happy that the Bulls are in trouble again.

We had to pay for the maintenance at Belle Vue when we rented it so it maybe common practice.

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So, where are we? 

Well I’ve posted a couple of times on this thread already – haven’t read all of it and have been away from the forum for a while as I’m really not interested in having the same old arguments with the same old people about the same old subjects. However….this absolutely needs discussion, or more accurately I need to vent about this situation.

Firstly, this is by no means the end of the matter. From the cryptic RFL “we are just commenting to say we have no comment regarding a stadium we have a vested interest tweet”, to the promise – apparently – of yet another newly developed stadium in West Yorkshire, and specifically Bradford where undeveloped holes in the ground owned by the Council are something of a speciality. I should also point out, that with a heavy heart, we do need to move away from Odsal, so this isn’t a “we should be staying at all costs” post – from what I’ve seen very few people are suggesting this.

My biggest bugbare – Andrew Chalmers. I wouldn’t trust him as far as I could throw him. I remember posting on here in 2016/17 that what the club needed bare minimum was an open and honest owner because all we’ve had is a barrage of lies – the Pope could have taken over and we wouldn’t have trusted him because we were at the lowest ebb following let down after let down. If you had any sort of sense of the situation, you could see that these fans were hurting.

Yet what do we get? Personally I am struggling to think of a less self-aware person in all my time following RL. Slinging mud to Super League owners whilst we are struggling to get out of the lowest tier the club has ever played in. Stones being lobbed by a bloke in a glass house, not only because we are in League 1, but because his previous attempts at running a club in NZ are hardly covered with glory. His declaration we will be back in the city in 2-4 years – tone deaf to the history of failed developments within the city.

Which brings us to the ultimate question – why on earth is this bloke in charge of our club? He has no money, he’s come from the other side of the world, and he isn’t particularly interested in engaging with fans. And most interestingly of all, he has said the RFL approach HIM in 2016…(!)


So, the first whiff that we might be moving came out a couple of weeks ago? Maybe it’s RL-can’t-plan-ahead-itis, but it simply can’t have occurred to Mr C one day in late July that these costs are prohibitive. So why now – this has probably been in the pipeline for a while – dare I say it since 2016?

A few people on here, and elsewhere have noted 2019 was always going to be an interesting year as this is the year that the Rugby-playing covenant expires within the Odsal lease. It’s also the year that our current rental agreement comes to an end – Chalmers apparently refusing to be tied down for longer than the remaining three year stint when taking over the club which had already been agreed before he got there. Isn’t that a coincidence? It’s also the final year we can be bound by our terms of re-entry into the RFL, such as being obliged to run a reserve team etc.

And to me, it all comes back to the question, why Chalmers? Why did the RFL ask him to apply? Why was he the RFLs preferred bidder?  Questions that have never been answered. Perhaps has the case of the former Bulls staff vs the RFL gone to court, the circumstances of what was – to many – a very suspect changing of hands would have come out. For now, it seems there is neither the time, interest or even solid enough evidence for anyone to do any proper investigating which is a crying shame as my gut feeling is there is a huge scandal waiting to be uncovered.

To the RFL – I’ll keep this to their ownership of Odsal only. When they took on ownership, I’m pretty sure they were conned and I do feel for them in this regard. However, it must be said that they have had a huge conflict of interest with regards to the worsening fortunes of the Bulls since that day. I’m not interested in opening up a whole RFL vs Bulls debate again – that said I think their ties to Odsal did have an influence on who took over in 2016, given that i) the club were close to extinction and the RFL could neither afford nor want to pick up the costs usually picked up by the club and ii) They are three years away from unlocking the Odsal site. A cynic might say, they invite a patsy over to keep the club going until that time, at which point they can flog it off to the highest bidder, pay the patsy to go back to NZ and happy days. In fact to partially answer a question why you might move halfway across the world is in 2016, just about the only asset the club had going for it was…Odsal.

Now of course, I may be totally barking up the wrong tree – some stuff I’ve posted fits this narrative (Chalmers general disintrest, flying over from NZ for no apparent reason) and some doesn’t (The RFL’s We’ll decide where you move to actually Tweet).

At this moment in time, there is far too much not in the public domain – understandably – to get a clear enough picture. If we take last night’s statement as gospel, then the RFL must be bricking it – somehow I don’t think they are. Even if it’s a powerplay to get the RFL to take on some of the costs within the lease. Then what? It ain’t getting any cheaper, and Chalmers ain’t getting any richer. We’ll be having these conversations again in five years time.

Some may agree here, some may totally disagree that’s fine. I’m not blaming the RFL for all the Bulls woes here, in fact if you looked purely on the surface we are the most stable we’ve been for a while. However if this has all been built on some big play to get the stadium money then that’s something else entirely.

This could still go one of a few ways – but ultimately I suspect we won’t be playing at Odsal next year (or ever again), there won’t be any new stadium in 2-4 years, and Chalmers won’t be at the helm of the club within that time either. Where that leaves us – aside from in Dewsbury – who knows?

Apologies for the rant.

SQL Honours

Play off mini league winner - 2002. Bronze Medalist - 2003. Big Split Group Winner - 2006. Minor Stupidship - 2005, 2006. Cup Silver Medalist - 2008, 2009

CHAMPION - 2005, 2009, 2010

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