Peter Hood statement in full

The interview with recently reappointed Bradford Bulls director Stephen Coulby that appeared in Saturday’s (June 2) Telegraph & Argus under the headline ‘There’s Good News and Bad News for Bulls’ appears to be a carefully crafted concoction of half-truths and omissions that leaves one wondering – why, exactly?

Before I come to the ‘why’ question, let me first dispose of Mr Coulby’s remarks.

On the question of VAT, Coulby is reported as saying that Andrew Bennett and I “failed to pay a £250,000 VAT bill on the deal which saw them sell the lease on Odsal to the RFL...”.

What Coulby for some reason chooses not to mention, however, is an arrangement whereby this VAT would be paid at £50,000 per month over the five months commencing May 2012. Not quite the same as “failed to pay”, I suggest.

It is not unusual for businesses to arrange to pay large, exceptional VAT charges in this manner. The Bulls’ regular VAT bills due for the period ended March 2012, meanwhile, was paid in full and on time.

Coulby goes on to say that “Hood and his former co-director Bennett budgeted to lose over £1million this year”. This is not true.

There is a cashflow model that shows that, if nothing happened to generate new monies, based on a full salary cap spend and other substantial football costs, then the result would be a loss of over £1million.

But as we know, the Pledge For Survival raised over half a million of new cash from fans and friends of the club, including from myself and Andrew Bennett and Ryan Duckett, but not, so far as I recall, from messrs Caisley, Coulby or Agar. Added to which, as the continuing director Ryan Duckett is in a position to confirm, discussions were well advanced with a number of well-funded potential sponsors at the time Bennett and I were forced out.

Furthermore, the club has a firm six-figure offer in writing from Warrington Wolves’ owner Simon Moran for John Bateman.

While I would be the last person to want to cash-in a young home-grown talent as prodigious as John obviously is, the fact is the interests of the club should always come first.

Castleford Tigers’ lucrative deal with Hull FC over their young home-grown talent Joe Arundel announced last week is an example of money talking. There will always be clubs with money wanting players and clubs with players needing cash.

In his T&A interview, Coulby says: “There is progress being made but other things have come out of the woodwork, such as a six-figure loan which we didn’t know about... taken out by Hood and Bennett in March...”

Again, Coulby is being economical with the truth. There was no such loan. The cash in question was an advance of the club’s own broadcast rights distributions (TV money) from Super League, in the sum of £110,000.

In other words, this is the club drawing down its own money, in advance, to ease cash-flow. Not unlike someone getting a salary or wages in advance, in fact. Is that a loan? Not in the way Coulby would have T&A readers believe, it isn’t.

Many clubs choose to take advances of their TV money from time to time. Indeed, senior RFL director Blake Solly confirmed this in an e-mail on December 15 2011 when he said: “... over the last 12-18 months we have seen an increasing number of requests for advances from future months/years distributions...”.

And the fact is that Mr Caisley himself knew all about this £110,000 advance as long ago as March. It is quite clearly identified in a projection prepared by me and e-mailed to him on my behalf by Ryan Duckett.

This same projection also clearly identifies the £250,000 VAT on the stadium deal as being due in May: in fact, as I say above, the projection is improved by this money being spread over the next five months.

Coulby goes on: “There are also other potential items going forward as well which we’re having to work on”.

I don’t know what Coulby means by this but I do know that the club, along with others, has settled its position with the tax man as regards tax due on ‘image rights’ and that the terms agreed are much more advantageous than was anticipated at the time when Coulby and I served on the club’s board together.

We thought back then that the club’s ‘image rights’ liability might exceed £500,000. But even including interest the final settlement is half of that and, furthermore, is to be paid not now but over the next three years – three years when the club could expect to generate revenues of at least £12million. So the bill will account for only about two per cent of anticipated revenues over that period.

Coulby says that a total of “£1.25million was needed to meet the club’s debts and take it forward until the end of next year”. But can this truly be the case?

Before I left the Bulls the audit manager of the club’s external accountants gave me figures to show that, in her opinion, the club made a profit before tax in the region of £250,000 for the year ended December 31 2011. I estimate that from January through to April/May this year, the club will have generated a further £100,000 net profit.

In the T&A, Coulby says that £500,000 is in the pipeline from a would-be investor but says the club needs at least £750,000 more to safeguard the club’s future, implying the club needs that money now. But does it?

The club had substantial funds at bank and no overdraft when Andrew Bennett and I went. It owed no PAYE or routine VAT. It owed tax on the stadium and ‘image rights’ but these were to be paid over time. It had ordinary creditors, as any business has, but it also had money due to it. It also had Warrington’s cash offer for John Bateman. It had to pay wages ongoing but had the benefit of ongoing Super League TV income and other central distributions. Plus there were big new sponsorship discussions well advanced. I don’t recognise that as adding up to a shortfall of £1.25m or anything like it.

Which brings me back to the question – why? Why is Stephen Coulby being so economical with the truth?

Could it be, perhaps, that he seeks to paint a scenario to justify an imminent plunge into administration, all the while protesting this is the last thing he and his colleagues want?

Is administration, with its implications for creditors, staff, players and shareholders, the price being exacted by the money-men that Ryan Duckett and I were told were waiting in the wings to get on board just as soon as Andrew Bennett and I were gone?

As a major shareholder with a vested interest in Bradford Bulls – my holding of 20 per cent ranks second in line behind Chris Caisley’s 26 per cent – I have asked Ryan Duckett to put me in touch with the person who has conducted the ‘independent financial review’ but whose identity appears, for some reason, to be a secret.