I noticed at the end of the piece on Scruton in the T&A he mentions that “Steve is working every hour under the sun and the coaching staff are giving us every chance of getting the results. It’s up to us to do the business.”

I imagine that's the message that we're supposed to hear from HQ, but TBH if he is working every hour I wonder what he's doing, because we've had the same problems every season and the same quotes from players/Duffy in the T&A. I'm not sure hard work on his behalf is the answer, unless he's not being doing anything for the last three seasons, which is obviously not the case.

It'd be great to see them turn it around on Friday and I'm hoping that's the case, but I'm afraid they did similar last year here and there, and those victories rang hollow given the repetition of daft mistakes, lack of imagination, outright collapse soon after. I had let myself be persuaded it was all the fault of agent provocateurs in the camp (against my best judgement) but irrespective of whether we win on Friday the quicker we have a change in management the better.

All these comments coming out on the hours McNamara is putting in, how he's always planning and watching game footage, and it's the players fault not the managers are almost identical to those coming out of VP over the last 12 months about McCall. And look how that ended...

Just shows that they both clearly care and want to do well, but despite all the effort neither have cut the mustard where it counts...

Personally in my experience (of working in entirely different sectors to sports teams) a member of management having to work such hours is a symptom of systematic failure. Everyone has to work over now and again but to constantly have to do it suggests problems. Not only that fatigue reduces your ability to think and get the best out of resources especially in a labour intensive environemnt.

Yeah, see examples of it every day in the office, and the over analysis can often lead to not knowing what the best thing to do is so nothing at all gets done. And you have to wonder if he's realising how far out of his depth he is and hopes all the extra hours will counter-balance his natual short comings as a head coach. So far, it hasn't.

Yes, there are problems. Money.

One reason why he, and the other senior managers at the club, have to work such long hours is because the club cannot afford more people. The real benefit of having a sugar daddy is that that is how the improvements in the non-playing staff are funded. How were clubs like Wigan and Hudds and Leeds able to take senior Bulls staff? Look at how many non-playing staff, at all levels, the Bulls have had to lose, often to the competition, over recent years.

If only Caisley had not been so determined to sign Harris.

Without in any way seeking to comment on Macca's coaching ability (others are far more qualified than me to do that) I wonder if the new head coach would be prepared to put those hours in, or accept such a limited budget for his own support team?

I think we are pretty lucky to have such a dedicated team trying to keep this club going, to be honest. As a small example: several times now, one of the Club's (tiny) marketing team has given up her evenings to work with Bullbuilder (and given very valuable input). As she did last night. And she sent an email to us this morning at 6.56am, for God's sake! What does that say about the work ethic and dedication at the club? Come on!

Its a chicken and egg situation though. The worse we do on the park, the less there is to fund the personnel off the park. At the inception of SL, the club was able to buy in senior experienced expertise - Brian Smith, and through him Peter Deakin and so on. Where now are the funds to do something like that?

Despite what Mystic Messiah and his disingenuous dishonesty would have people believe, I would love for the club to be able to bring in more and experienced coaching resources. And off-field resources generally. And I'm sure that view would be very much shared by the club's management team. The only way I can see that being able to happen is if the various directors paid for it personally. If you were a director, reading this forum, would you be minded to shell out a few hundred thousand of your own dosh? I bloody well wouldn't. Equally, as a fan I was bitterly bitterly disappointed - and angry - with what we saw last Sunday. I'm still seething and depressed about it and its nearly bloody Thursday now!

Seems to me we are in a Catch-22 here. I'll say again what I have been saying for ages: does anyone have any practicable ideas for how to break the Catch-22? Cos I'm buggered if I do

Best post this week.

Somehow I'm not convinced, telling us that people are working hard behind the scenes with little money and that evidence of this is emails sent early in the morning is nothing new really, that sort of material has been part of the counter-narrative throughout, and I respect Adey and your right to pursue this line. We haven't got a sugar daddy so there's nothing we can do etc, it's same old, same old, for the last three seasons, however it's becoming almost as predictable as the position taken by ME.

Unfortunately the position Adey describes is a position lots of businesses/enterprises find themselves in and there's lots of ways to tackle it. Without knowing the pay structure for McNamara et al it'd be difficult to fully appraise the situation. Perhaps when re-negotiating his contract extension there could have been a performance element included, perhaps the security of his contract on an increased salary (unimpeded by the negative impact of results upon income) has negatively impacted our ability to spend on other staff etc. Perhaps his insistence upon GPS monitoring with the attendant cost has reduced our budget for marketing etc, perhaps spending upon new training facilities was money poorly spent if it doesn't translate in to performance on the field. Fact is we don't know, so spinning it one way rather than the other is just that - spin, and congratulating your mates on that basis is hardly an argument and is a little disingenuous to all those who have posted reasoned arguments throughout the week.

I have no doubt whatsoever there are lots of hard working poorly paid people trying to keep the club going, but i doubt the coach falls into that category (except no doubt he's hard working). Nor from what I hear, read and see is it financially impossible for us to get rid of the coach, however some people seem wedded to him regardless, and will find any excuse to present the lack of performance as part of some broader malaise from which we're incapable of responding due to the terrible structural inequalities of ownership etc. I don't 'buy' this and TBH i think continuing to pursue this argument is just as damaging as Eddies desire to see the situation worsen thereby forcing the change. The fact remains that McNamara hasn't achieved anything of note during his tenure other than breaking records we didn't want to see broken, he's had the luxury of constructing a team, dismantling it and starting again only to repeat the same mistakes. He's overseen a huge decline in attendance, frustrated and disheartened diehard supporters whilst still having a reasonable resource at his disposal in terms of recruitment etc.

Perhaps he will read Adey's post, realise the sacrifices other staff are making and accept a pay cut, or drop a rung to assistant coach again. But I'm afraid if the situation Adey describes is accurate and I have no reason to believe otherwise, then the coaches failure should be even more of a concern given the resources in pay and new initiatives he has utilised without success.

A lot of fair points there and I het there'll be plenty thinking "now that's the bet post this week". However, I need to take issue with you on a few things.

I don't want to rehash old arguments but I don't accept that McNamara has achieved nothing of note while at Bradford. I think the expectation that he should have continued our previously automatic top 5 finishes indefinitely was unreasonable and a cause of much of the frustration now.

However McNamara is deploying his resources, it comes back to Hood in the, because he's the guy whose strategy was and remains centred on McNamara. To say he has built his team is unfair when we know he would not have started from where he did - very few young players up to snuff resulting in a need to scour for bargain buys, some of which came off big style like Semi and Scruton, others not so much.

I've said before that I'm surprised the McCall case doesn't serve as more of a cautionary tale. There the fans thought it was obvious Todd had no clue and McCall was the dream candidate. Now we wait to see whther Peter Taylor will replicated the form that got him lauded, or the form that got him sacked, repeatedly.

And there's the nub of the problem. What makes a good manager? Are we saying McNamara lacks some sort of mystical mojo that Smith, Elliott and Nobby had? We're all stabbing in the dark really. Most now weigh up the probabilities and say it is most likely that a change of coach is the best way forward. Maybe I'm a pessimist but I'm just not sure, even now.

Apols for lack of coherence, half term hangover. I'll try and make more sense later.

Anarkik...have you ever sat down and had a decent one-to-one with anyone senior at the club?

As I do keep saying, I don;t profess to be any kind of an expert on the coaching or on the technical aspects of the game. What I HAVE become too much of an expert in of late is going home from matches bitterly disappointed and sometimes angry. me and thousands of others. So yes, without a doubt something needs addressing. All I can do is to try and give background in areas I DO know something about. To what extent those issues influence what we see on the park is something only the players, the coaching staff and the officials at the club can know, that's the trouble.

I have an analogy I use a lot at work - "make sure we don't shut down the wrong engine". After the M1 plane crash, where the pilot shut down the good engine not the failing engine seemingly because his instruments told him the other one was at fault. It seems maybe that is what Bradford City did...if we shut down an engine we need to be absolutely certain we are shutting down the failing engine and not the one that is working. If we ARE certain, then shut it down ASAP and replace it before it does any more damage. But make absolutely certain first?

or maybe, put another way, make sure we are indeed addressing the causes not just the symptoms.

Adey, last year (& maybe even the year before that, I can't remember that far back these days) you argued, sensibly, that Macca could not be replaced as there would likely be no reasonable aletrnative available & the Bulls couldn't afford it if there was. It's not for me to call for Macca's head but he now has one year less left on his contract & you signed Matt Orford, which would have cost a packet in spite of off-loading Deacon.

I completely understand the background Adey as you know but anyone would think we were alone in Super League with these issues. Are we? And if we are what are the solutions? At the moment the mantra appears to be that there can't be any change because if there was it might change things for the worse, and by the way we're stuck in this situation so there's nothing we can do anyway. Meanwhile the club's performances get ever worse.

Well I'm sorry but if ever I read a recipe for disaster that's it.




To use your analogy I'm afraid that the plane is burning up while the pilot dithers over which engine to shut down!

Quite. And we're told that resources are available for further signings if the right player becomes available.

Now, I would argue that if the season continues as it has started that those resources could be put into getting a change of head coach. Ok, not ideal but needs must etc. If things pick well enough then look at it at the end of the season.

The key is deciding when to make the change. Do we wait until the season is over or make a decision based on performances before then? How much goodwill and loyalty can the club expect in the face of further performances like last Sunday?

If I understand it right, the club would have had Walker and Deacon, but instead elected to go for Orford and Orford? And maybe an undisclosed transfer fee for Deacon? And maybe third-party image rights for Orford? My guess is that any incremental spend was not likely to be as much as people might assume, to be honest. But guess is all it is, because I have no knowledge of the specifics.

Equally, we have no knowledge of the specifics of Macca's contract. It might instead say something like 6 months' pay in lieu of notice regardless of when it happens, for all we know.

I'm assuming that the club has little scope for extra spend financially (and yes, I heard what the Chairman said at the fans' forum, and yes, it's always possible they ARE voluntarily keeping something in reserve instead of spending the full salary cap, although unless we have an imminent Volcano waiting in the wings I'm not sure why that would of itself be the approach I'd follow) so we come back to the likely source for funding a new coaching team being the directors' pockets - IMO anyway. So it will be down to the board in more ways than one I guess, if my supposition is correct.

I live in hope that we'll see a soon and sharp improvement on the park, so this issue calms down a bit again. If we do not though, then the board will need to be clear PDQ what is the cause of the underperformance, and what steps they must take to resolve it - because much more like Sunday and IMO they'll need to rewrite the financial forecasts anyway.

“Steve is working every hour under the sun and the coaching staff are giving us every chance of getting the results. It’s up to us to do the business.”


It's all very probable that this may be the case, however just because someone works every hour doesn't necessarily mean they are up to doing the job. Where I come from we call these [i'busy fools'[/i

Running around all day and never really achieving anything

Perhaps that is where he is going wrong, maybe if he stood back at looked at the greater picture, he may see where he needs to focus his energy.

After all, Quality s far greater than quantity

No but I'm quite happy to do so if you think they'll heed my advice

As I explained in detail there are lots of other decisions that have cost money, these go largely undebated, however when it comes to McNamara it appears finance and the structure of ownership preclude change according to your argument. Yet the cost of persevering with him long after many clubs would have acted has, I would argue, had enormous cost in terms of gate receipts, good will etc and the cost of dithering now could seriously and permanently damage the club. I don't doubt finances are partially a reason behind the indecision, nor do I doubt Hood has a soft spot for McNamara and that might make it a difficult thing to do for him personally, but I think decisive action now could ensure those that walked away last week might just return before they find other ways to part with their cash and never come back.

Let's face it we'll never have the rebuilding/re-branding opportunity afforded by the advent of SL again, nor do we have a new ground on the immediate horizon, or a rich benefactor as you point out, so we need to preserve the fan base we have if we're not to enter a longer term decline catalysed by the Board's failure to act.
It would hardly be a rash jugement and it would be difficult to argue that Steve hadn't been given plenty of opportunity to prove himself in post.