ARL close to Warriors deal

The New Zealand Warriors will soon be sold to the Carlaw Park Heritage Trust, an arm of Auckland Rugby League.

The deal is close to being finalised between the two groups, with the current owner, Eric Watson, set to to sell the club to the regional body, rather than the American consortium led by Hawaiian Richard Fale.

There are plans for a press conference this week to announce the change of ownership, once the deal has been completed.

It appears Watson has had a change on heart on the future of the NRL club, having previously agreed to terms to sell the Warriors to Fale’s group.

On April 2, it was reported businessman Fale’s consortium would be the new owners of the Warriors after reaching a verbal agreement with Watson’s Cullen Investments.

But the ARL has stepped in with an improved bid to buy the team, using finances from the Carlaw Park Heritage Trust.

Fale believed he was so close to a deal last week he said he would be returning to New Zealand to finalise the sale.

‘‘We’re tying up the loose ends here,’’ he said on April 22. ‘‘It still looks like we’re on track and things will go down the way we expected.’’

Fale said he and Cullen Investments were down to sorting out the nitty-gritty details of the purchase of the club.

‘‘It’s tweaks here and there to the purchase agreement,’’ he said. ‘‘We sent over a draft that we’re happy with, they’re reviewing it again and we expect them to submit back to us some time soon, probably early next week.’’

Fale also said he had a big falling out with ARL chairman Cameron McGregor.

The saga has been going on since last August, when Auckland businessman Paul Davys put in an offer believed to be about $15 million for the club.

It was reported at the time that Watson was looking for $20m and the final price of the Warriors is understood to be closer to $24m.

Negotiations between Fale’s group and Watson’s Cullen Investments weren’t smooth sailing. Fale wanted an asset acquisition, buying the individual parts of the Warriors but Watson was looking for a share sale, in which both the club’s assets and liabilities would be taken over.

The ARL didn’t have a problem with a share sale.

Even though they were offering less money than Fale’s group, the simplicity of the deal appealed to Watson. Hawaiian businessman Richard Fale on April 22

The ARL initially made a joint bid for the Warriors with the Waipareira Trust, and were granted an exclusivity agreement. But when the Waipareira Trust pulled out, those negotiations collapsed and the exclusivity agreement ended.

They launched another bid, with ownership part of a bigger plan to rejuvenate the sport in Auckland and set up a semiprofessional league.

There were initial talks of a joint bid with Fale’s group, but this didn’t last long and relations between the two have been frosty ever since.

The ARL has also been in discussions with former Kiwis coach Graham Lowe, a part owner of the Warriors in the 1990s, and former CEO Wayne Scurrah.

The ARL would need approval from the NRL to rubber-stamp the sale, but this should be a formality.