You're forgetting one very important fact: that even after returning to The Ricoch, SISU said that they were not interested in bidding for ACL or the stadium because they were building their own ground. At no point did they make a bid until the belated, too-little-too-late bid for the Higgs share (which in itself showed how badly their previous brinkmanship, even after returning to The Ricoh, had burnt them).
The "make the same offer available to SISU" concept is a red herring too and absolute nonsesnse as a concept. If SISU wanted it, why didn't they make a bid-instead of continually protesting that their eyes lay elsewhere? If someone else has made a bid, and SISU wish to make a bid, then bloody do it-there was nothing stopping them. Generally speaking, the seller doesn't go around contacting prospective buyers asking them if they'd like to make an offer! And why on earth would you offer a bid from one company to another company that as far as the best evidence available suggests, is simply not interested? If it was all just spin by SISU to say that they weren't interested, they only have themselves to blame for it backfiring so badly.
And if you are going to go around as a seller making prospective offers to potential buyers, do you do it with companies that you distrust who have been trying to drive you out of business for the last two years?
Your view comes from a historical perspective and it's trying to re-write the reality and atmosphere of the time with the benefit of hindsight of where we are, and how screwed we are, now. Maybe if SISU hadn't weasled their way out of the earlier lease we'd have had a better chance of owning the ground or ACL?
Erm... I think you're forgetting one important fact. The council said on August 21st 2014, that time was needed rebuild trust before there could be discussions for ownership.
How much time, exactly, did they give for that trust to be rebuilt before they sold to Wasps? There's a fact, a really, really important one. Who's disregarding it here?
As for SISU's bid after the fact being too little too late, in what sense is that true. Financially it seems that the terms were similar, it's just that Higgs chose to go with Wasps.
And actually, if you want to get the best price for something, generally you make it available to the most bidders possible whether you like them or not, or whether you think they might be interested or not. Remind again when this happened, post return?
As for the lease being broken, indeed. If you can spot anywhere at all where I say that SISU have played any of this well, then show me. But it looks like you're the one casting the current argument in the frame of the past here.
The brutal truth is that the club were not offered the same kind of deal as that offered to Wasps, and that despite the Council's statement on our return there never was any intention to rebuild trust.
There's no attempt to rewrite history by me, almost all of my comments on this relate to what's gone on since the return to the Ricoh. But it seems there's a lot of effort being spent trying to muddy the fact that the council has acted in an entirely underhand manner in all of this.
