Bantams refuse to give up on sharing facilities

IF it had not been so serious, Julian Rhodes would have burst out laughing.

Here he was, the man who had saved Bradford City from bankruptcy not once but twice in recent years, being forced to deal with bailiffs sent to Valley Parade by the local council.

The Bantams had exited administration for a second time a couple of years earlier but were still struggling to make ends meet. Among the bills that the club had fallen behind in paying was their Council Tax, hence the unexpected visit one morning from a firm looking to recover the debt.

Rhodes remembers the incident vividly, not least because it gave him clarity over just what had to be done to get City back on track. Namely, without any help from Bradford Council.

Four years on, the 41-year-old – now jointly in charge of the League Two outfit with Mark Lawn – believes he has hit upon a plan to revive the fortunes of not only City but also Bradford Bulls rugby league club.

Speaking exclusively to the Yorkshire Post about his proposals to unite the ownership of Bradford's two sporting clubs at Valley Parade, Rhodes said: "I really see it as the only way forward.

"The Odsal scheme being abandoned means we have an opportunity to do something really positive in terms of the future of both City and the Bulls.

"My dealings with Bradford Council since 2002 when we first went into administration have shown me that looking for help from them is a waste of time.

"I can laugh now about them sending the bailiffs in over us struggling to pay our rates of 100,000 per year, but it wasn't funny at the time.

"I admit we were in arrears, but even the bailiffs seemed embarrassed. Here was a local authority that had pledged a couple of years earlier to do all they could to keep a Football League club in Bradford doing exactly the opposite.

"It opened my eyes, especially when you consider all the help the Bulls have had over the years."

Rhodes first joined the Valley Parade board in 1997 along with his father when Geoffrey Richmond was chairman.

Since then, promotion to the Premier League has been followed by a long and painful slide down the divisions, caused mainly by what Richmond later admitted to being "six weeks of madness" in the summer of 2000 when the likes of Benito Carbone, David Hopkin, Ashley Ward and Dan Petrescu were brought in on lucrative, long-term contracts.

Ten years on, the legacy of that crazy summer still lingers in the form of City no longer owning their own home after selling the stadium to the family pension fund of former chairman, Gordon Gibb, in 2003.

Rhodes's antipathy towards the council dates back to the saga that led to Bradford being forced to sell their home at a time when the Bulls were tenants at Valley Parade after moving out of Odsal on a temporary basis to allow building work to take place.

The Bantams' joint chairman said: "We first spoke to the council in 2002 about the possibility of the two clubs playing at Valley Parade on a permanent basis.

"It was the time when the council were trying to get out of their lease at Odsal, something that eventually saw the Bulls paid 5m due to there being 17 years remaining on it.

"Under our proposal, the council would have used the 5m they were handing the Bulls to instead bring them down to Valley Parade.

"During 2002, (then council chief executive) Ian Stewart came with us to see the administrator and the PFA, and made all the right noises, about how this was a good idea and a way of saving Bradford City, while also helping the Bulls.

"It looked quite promising but, in the end, the Bulls decided to take the money and somehow got another lease for more than 100 years on a peppercorn rent.

"An amazing deal, even if, as (Bulls chairman) Peter Hood claimed in last week's Yorkshire Post, that it would have cost the council 20m over the remaining years of the original lease. How had that situation materialised?

"We were cut off completely, despite it possibly representing the end for Bradford City. Thankfully, it wasn't but that was no thanks to the council.

"We came out of administration and struggled along, eventually having to sell the ground to Gordon Gibb for 2.5m and the shop to London-based Development Securities Ltd for another 2.5m.

"Basically, the vast majority of the 5m went straight to Lombard, the bank that had lent the club the money to develop the main stand and Kop.

"With a bit of foresight, we could have avoided having to sell Valley Parade and the Bulls, who were playing here at the time we made the proposal to the council, could have stayed."

Rhodes sees that as a major missed opportunity for Bradford sport, hence his desire to see the recent shelving of the 75.5m Odsal Sports Village as the last chance to make amends.

He said: "The figures for the Odsal Sporting Village never added up. But we couldn't come out publicly and say 'this won't happen' because Bradford City would then get the blame when it went wrong. We didn't want to be a patsy. So, instead, we went to see the council in September last year and again floated the idea of both clubs moving to Valley Parade.

"We said 'a fortune has been spent on making Valley Parade an excellent stadium and we believe you are sitting on a valuable asset at Odsal, so surely there is a deal that can be done'.

"The money from the sale of Odsal could then be used to accommodate both clubs at Valley Parade. We were told the council would be in touch within a month but never heard from them again. We even found out the Odsal Sporting Village had collapsed through the media, despite the council privately telling us we were an integral part of the scheme.

"There isn't any vision coming from the council and that is why I feel both City and the Bulls should grasp the situation and form a partnership that gives us both the best chance possible of being a success."