Brew you ask how independant is the Trust and I will ask you how independant do you think the Supporters Direct is ? The last meeting I went to I was aghast to tell you the truth and the Championship reps were somewhat put in our place by Rimmer , the only one to speak up for us was the Colne Valley MP.
I have challenged this since and was told that the Supporters Direct are part funded by the RFL and the meeting came across as purely and simply a PR excercise for the RFL.
Laura Harrison has done sterling work in this area for Supporters Direct and works really hard but I think it is a conflict of interest when an organisation born out of supposadly representing fans of the game are reliant on the very organisation they should be challenging.

If fundraising for the Club is not the job of the Trust but a Supporters Club then who is going to funrdaise for the Club as we don`t have a Supporters Club.

Supporters Direct does have its issues and politics, I understand the Premier League withdrew their funding after been challenged over something.

As for Fundraising, I see Warrington Wolves supporters Trust run the "Squadbuilder" as a sub section of the trust, Fax trust runs the "Fax Builder" whereas for instance, at York, the club themselves run a Squadbuilder fund. I see no issue with that but what other aims does the trust have currently?

I understand that the intention is to do this not just for Halifax Fans but all RL Fans, but if thats the case should it be the Halifax Supporters Trust doing this, or a newly formed group perhaps incorporating fans of other clubs as well?

Come to the meeting Brew on Monday and we can give everyone more info. We want to kick start the campaign but the intention is for it to grow into much bigger than just us. Think your thinking too literally about the trust. I suggest you read and digest the whole press release again.

The supporters trust have already raised 25k for the fax fund builder this season and as proved how important it is to the club and its supporters through hard work and determination there for I am delighted they have decided to try challenge the RFL over the disgusting way our beautiful game is run. You saw how angry I am about what happened with my speech in the south stand bar on saturday I was trying to get people to fight back and now the supporters trust as given us the chance to do this. Well done Linda, Chris and co I am 100% behind you.

isn't this exactly what the new group is trying to do?

I agree with Brew on that point, If indeed it is for the whole of RL then you certainly should not have the club name in the title of that particular supporters trust, Perhaps a Championship Supporters trust or something along those lines.

Put it this way when its on Sky with the " HATE THE RFL " banners and t-shirts the only people who are going to look silly are those wearing them and the club will also be made to look stupid. It sound like a child who doesn't want to play anymore and is coming accross more that way than any other. In one of Chris Smiths posts earlier in the thread he wrote, something along the lines of i understand what people are saying " BUT I HATE THE RFL" for what they have done, from someone outside looking in it looks more like the voice of the people is more about getting his point accross than listening to the majority of what people are saying, Hate is far too strong a word. ( Do we hate the RFL and the Benovolent fund that helps players who have had the misfortune of needing it, i dont think so) I dont hate everything RFL far from it but the way this licensing went about i certainly am begrieved

If its worded properly then i would buy t-shirts and wear them to the games as a protest but anything with the word Hate on and i want nothing to do with it and when it tarnishes the club the blame will be solely down to that wording.

There is no new group, just the existing trust as I understand it,

Maybe I am interpreting things wrong, but I do think emotions are running high, and right now a protest would probably leave us looking silly and bitter and could have more of a negative effect in the long term.

People from other clubs still mention "getting the buckets out" to poke fun at us, this will only add more ammuntion for when things arent going well, for people to have a bit of a laugh and take the ****

I dont think it matters, they'll poke fun either way if they are inclined that way, actually doing something for the good of the whole game is important though. Its shows a bit of passion and pride in the town for Rugby League.

Because too many clubs have gone to the wall 'chasing the dream' and SL teams daren't blood their youngsters for fear of relgation. But ever since franchising came in there's been way more youth pushing in to the first teams and no club's gone to the wall......oh.....hang on......

As for the protest, well, I fell that if we don't get other clubs involved then we'll just come across as bad losers becasue we probably wouldn't be having this conversation had we been promoted. Plus, we don't yet know the outcome of the meeting between the club and the RFL. They [imight[/i (and I can't stress that word enough) have a valid reason for not admitting us.

Your right Brew other clubs do still poke fun at us because we got the buckets out ,so do I wish we had never done it? Do I heck as like because geting the buckets out saved our club , it is highly likely we would not have had a club if we had not done what we did.
I did not feel entirly comfortable with doing it at the time either but I had already grown an extra layer of skin from having the micky taken out of us every away game with the Bluesox name that Wood foisted on us. I still cringe at the thought of going to St Helens and listening to the matchday MC make disparaging remarks about the team our club and our name we were made the laughing stock of Super League by Wood.

Thing is Brew you have to strike while that PASSION is there and right now it is, okay mostly from Fax fans but the thing is the RFL will just laugh this off as they know things 'blow over'.
Well this is where we have to KEEP GOING and take others on this journey, we need to become an irritant to the RFL, so much so that they actually for once HAVE TO LISTEN, I know they are thick skinned, well maybe in tha Fat Controlers case very thick! We also know they will try throw this back as just us being bitter and a bunch of rebels who they will try isolate.
But we need to carry on hitting them with the catalogue of mistakes they have made and the list is ENDLESS.

Franchises = bending the rules and moving the goalposts between franchise bids.
Expansion failures (Paris/Gateshead/Sheffield/Crusaders/Toulouse) to name but a few.
Throwing money at the above clubs (anybody really expect that £700K to come back?) yet letting other 'heartland clubs' almost wither away at various stages the last 10 years such as Whitehaven, Rochdale, Oldham, Keighley, Workington, Leigh, Swinton, Fax and even Doncaster the list goes on all went close to death as clubs.
No Kangaroo tours any more.
England still well behind the Aussies despite SL being here for how many years now?
The Sky deal for the Championship = Thursday night games at the last minute and very little money for those games going to the Championship clubs.
Allowing SL to 'rape' lower league clubs of players at all age levels cos they are SL clubs!
Allowing the manipulation of crowd figures to try make the game better supported than it is.
Only having 2 weeks between the CC semi finals and the Final yet how many weeks are there between the quarter finals and the round before???
No trust between the RFL and everybody else in the game, fans, clubs etc...
I could go on.

The thing is we are not asking for any special consideration for the Halifax Club , we are merely asking that an equal , fair and transparent apraisal is aplied to all clubs .We also want an avenue to make our voices (as fans ) heard by the RFL ,I thought the Supporters Direct was that avenue , I was wrong .
I see little point of being a member of an organisation whose hands are tied because they are funded by the RFL.
If everyone feels it`s ok for the RFL to fund expansion clubs and whilst overseeing them break the law and go bust while they starve Championship clubs of revenue then so be it.I for one believe Widnes would have fared no worse than Crusaders if they had been promoted 3yrs ago But for us who don`t like it how do we make our voices heard ? Has anyone ever had a reply back from Red Hall when you have written/e-mailed / phoned about something ?
One would think the Supporters Direct would at least speak out for the Crusaders supporters and what has hapened to them.Now even Etherington is challenging the RFL about Crusaders ,they will have to take notice of him because "He has a voice " well we wouldn`t mind one too.
The protest was not dreamed up because we fancied something to do in our spare time it was because we have been inundated by rugby league fans saying they are sick of being made fools of by their sports governing body.
Fans from our club saying "if our Club don`t stand up to the RFL on this we will not renew our season ticket again" . Our Club cannot stand up to the RFL it`s not their fault the franchise business is a mess , but fans can speak up not just for their own clubs but for all clubs.
I watched one interview with Wood after the franchise thing last week and he talked only about Super League , Super League is The Brand and anyone who thinks a fair deal is going to be given to any Championship Clubs without some kind of fuss being made is mistaken.

*

Instead of casting doubt and to a degree mocking what we are doing, again Brew I urge you to come along Monday. I for one will be happy to field and answer questions from anybody. The Press release is quite clear that our campaign is about winning back our game for all clubs. The press release has gone to local, regional, generic and National press and it just so happens we are able to make some noise a week on Thursday too. We are not doing this purely because of franchise knock back but it is a reason to spur us into action. Why don't you wait and see what we manage to arrange first??? For one I am bloody proud what we have achieved thus season with only a handful of supporters help. I am equally proud we have taken the fight to the RFL and Yes we gave the clubs FULL support to be doing this