to summarise so far: there are those that think that you can completely rebuild a team in 12 games with a still limited squad with a lot of injuries, and there are those that think that all will be well in the end, whenever that is.

there is a third way, and there are hints in the thread. As I said at the beginning of the season, it looks to me as if the club has been brought financially to its knees by Harris and Orford and a few other poor decisions, and Hood has at least taken the initiative with the season ticket deal etc to get things buzzing again, but most importantly get CASH into the club as soon as possible. Any chairman must be brilliant at PR (for the naive amongst you that means SPIN) and to say that there is room under the cap and it would be spent if needed to me translates into we cant pay up to the cap so theres no chance we will do unless something happens that gives us a bit spare, and anyway there are no players out there thanks to awford that want to come anyway.

so the only way to go is to fight our way up that league, and doesnt the club get more money the higher they finish in the league so getting as high as we can is important? And the only way to get up that league is purely heads down and tackle the **** out of anything that moves, forget anything fancy,for the rest of the season we need the Bulls to be the Stoke of Superleague, otherwise per previous post we will be 10th with no pulling power for any players that are going to build the squad further.

So far we've had two very bad performances and the rest have been pretty much what might have been expected at the start of the season. A bit disappointing that we didnt manage one "shock" victory against Wigan/Saints/Giants/Leeds.

As far as the new signings are concerned, I think we're getting what you might expect from the pool of players that are now our target market. Some decent performances but an awful lot of inconsistency. The players we've signed are available at a salary that we can afford because they have some talent but are unable to turn it on week in week out.

Despite our league position I have slightly more faith than this time last year, but until we can afford some genuine quality, or the younger players fulfill their potential, I cant see massive scope for improvement.

I would like to see Lionel Messi at scrum half.

This season was always going to be about reasonable performances at home and a good cup run. I think we signed a lot of players on one year contracts asking them to prove themselves. The fact that we signed so many always meant we had to be fortunate in having a lot of those gambles paying off. My worry is that we now have to replace most of them at the end of the year as they have not really impressed thus meaning next year will be another of transition making our seventh. This will then be followed by Potters departure after his two years meaning another coach and yet another transition year. After a while you have to start believing ypu are a mediocre club and no longer in transition.

The thing is, the club are in talks with OOC players and this should hopefully mean there'll be less of a player turn over this year.