IMHO i think making 5pm yesterday the deadline for pledges was a good idea it gives the club 2-3 days to go through all the pledges, all the fundraising activities, count the money from the leeds game and make sure every amount has been accounted for, so they dont come out and say we have made the £500k when in fact they have made £480k but someone miss counted and got the amount wrong.

Because, like you, I'm one of the idiots that's pledged. Thanks.

Thanks for the pledge. Hopefully it's kept the club running. We'll know either way before long.

Why didn't they make the deadline the 9th right from the start. How much more could we have raised by organising some additional fund raising activities over this Easter weekend?
There is now no time to do any of that. It's just poor planning, that is all. But it can easily be construed as being deceptive rather than clumsy.

BullBuilder are onside about saving the club from administration. As our statements throughout have made clear, we have not endorsed any party's actions, we just believe that administration would be potentially disastrous and have been doing our best to help avoid it.

They've given an announcement on the total, and extended it to get a push for the last 20k.

Don't see the problem. We'd all love for the nightmare to be over now, but if we need a bit longer then we'll have to wait.

Yes Adey, I would have preferred it to fail. That's very clearly why I am upset at having been lied to yet again by this moron who's asking for us to to place our faith in him.

What an idiotic question.

^
This

We'll get the £500K over the Weekend without a shadow of a doubt. There'll be enough pledges, extra pledges, buckets of money that got lost behind the sofa, undeclared sponsor money etc etc... we'll get to the total, no problem

But there are still some interesting times ahead, for sure

OK in that case you answer is irrefutable and so you of course have every right to express an opinion. And thank you for you support.

But please everyone...they are damned if they do and damned if they do not!

Ryan told me yesterday that there are several exciting things very imminent, and that the next couple of days will be very interesting. I know no more than that, so make of it what you will.

But what would everyone else have done in their shoes if so close?

Remember: you can't pay salaries and PAYE when the banks are closed!

Not an idiotic question at all. What would YOU have done?

If they'd said they'll give the total when they'd counted it and made sure there were no mistakes then that would be fine. That's not an outright lie. What they did was give a time and a place when asking for our continued trust and then despite everything failed to deliver.

It might seem stupid to you for me to get annoyed about this because after all, what does a weekend flanked by bank holidays matter? It doesn't. The lies and promises they can't keep matter.

You have to smile at some folk. If the club had come out today and said we've raised £500,134 we would have folk coming here claiming the figure was false and bashing the club. They give the closest estimate as possible and an honest one and people still bloody moan. If we want to be bluntly honest, we've failed.. should Hood have just come out and said 'sorry guys but you've not quite hit the 500k so off to admin we go'?

The truth is, we need as much money as we can possibly raise, 500k was just the bare minimum.

This.

Here's an example of a promise I can keep:

I will never ask you if, instead of getting what you were told you'd get, you'd have preferred the club to go under.

Easy to make promises you can keep.

You keep fighting for the right to be lied to if you want to. I'm through with it. If you want to use the to question if I want the club to survive or not then go right ahead, but I'm going to exercise my right of thinking of you as someone who asks stupid rhetorical questions.

Spot on. What the club has tried to do is maximise its chances. Setting the deadline of last night was clearly to galvanise support ahead of the Leeds game. It was never going to be the HMRC deadline was it? 5pm on a non-working day which is followed by 3 more days off?

Did it work? 20821 through the gate rather suggests it did the trick to some degree. Unfortunately we still have some way to go so of course the fight continues.

I can only imagine the response if Hood had said "right, that's it. We gave it a shot and failed. Let's wait until Tuesday so we can tell the powers that be."

I'm not sure where that extra 20k is coming from as nobody has organised any events, everyone no doubt has family commitments and businesses will be largely inactive but clearly Messrs Hood, Duckett et al think there's a chance, so I guess we have to wait in hope.

I will follow the advice of my newly acquired key-ring and "Keep Calm and Save the Bulls"

So had they kept to their undertaking and made the announcement today, they would have had to say we had failed. And, to avoid being seen as liars, they would have had to have said they were not calling in the pledges, since they promised they would not do so if they had not raised £500k. And administration next week.

Which promise would you have preferred them to have kept? Making the final announcement today, and not calling in the pledges? Or not make the final announcement today and leave us with a chance?

Surely we should put the future of the club ahead of having to worry ourselves silly for two more days?

They could NOT have called the pledges in as it stands without breaking their biggest promise of all!

Hood et al have twisted and changed on their promises in just a week or so.

The 1m is not quite a million. Duckett says you have £250K then you don't. The deadline on Friday shifts to Monday. the announcement fior haldf time becomes Saturday 11.30 am and then becomes Tuesday. Can a promise be kept? Is their word their bond?

Some Hood apologists will defend this shambles. Bulls fans and pledgers should be able to trust the words out of the mouths of those in power. Why should anyone believe these people have a plausible plan for the fduture?

I've said all along that the deadline should NOT have been before the Leeds game, why stop a deadline to pull in funds before one of the biggest games of the year. They should have done a text in/call back for the pledges throughout the game and they would have had many more pledges coming in just because of the momentum of the excitement during and after the game.

There will have been many people who left the game last night who hadn't pledged but wanted to after the result, maybe even pledge again, but everyone thought the pledge was closed and were all looking towards the result today. It should have always been open to at least Sunday to capitalise on the Leeds game and once the deadline ends the website pledging page should be removed and no more taken so a figure can be counted, then if they are short issue a statement saying pledge are re-open, instead the deadline came, pledges never closed but nobody knew.

It is a good idea to keep the pledge open but it has been handled poorly.

Atki

Exactly

I think we just all need to calm down. Am I annoyed right now? Yes, I think it is all very bad PR. I think it looks bad to those looking from the outside in who we want investment from, as we keep moving the goal posts. However, after getting £480k I would say 20k should be achieveable. I am not sure how many people are off to Widnes, but as of yesterday morning (if Bulls were selling tickets in numerical order) only 300 tickets had been sold! We should be selling the full 600. Also, under 18s and Wyke are playing today, this should draw in a bit of money. The Northern pub on Halifax Rd has a big fundraiser tonight too for the club, so still a lot that can be done.

Adey, any chance of doing Bucket collections on Monday?

Please.

It's Ryan and Pete now.

A lot has changed since they announced the latest 'pledge' scheme - Caisley has shown his hand and the response from across the game has probably been greater than even they imagined (cheers for the contributions from East Hull!). Last night was also probably the best advert for investing in a club you could get - 21,000 people watch the Bulls beat their local rivals and superleague champions in a tough uncompromising match with an amazing atmosphere.

So to be honest I would imagine there's a lot going on behind the scenes, maybe some further discussion with potential investors and some level of confusion about the precise amounts raised. In that context I would have been amazed if they had made a conclusive statement this morning and so wasn't expecting much more than we got. I don't blame Hood for that, nor for the extension over the weekend, I think that makes perfect sense in the circumstances and could probably not have been planned for in advance, so let's see how this shakes out before jumping to conclusions.

If I had half a million to bung in, seeing the response of the fan base (and from across the game) plus being present last night might just have persuaded me, so maybe the degree of confusion about where the other money is coming from will get addressed soon, but perhaps they want to be sure of that before making any definitive announcements. Of course they may also be seeking time to hold an EGM and Caisley might be in charge by the end of next week, truth is we don't know, and will just have to wait for the time being.

Something we could do:

[urlhttp://www.bradfordbulls.co.uk/news/5813/UNDER%2020%27S%20AT%20ODSAL[/url

And pay on the gate.

Just a thought

I don't think anyone's in any doubt that the club needs to look at how it communicates.

That said they're in a unique situation. I didn't see too many people questioning the timing of various announcements before they were made. It's easy to be wise after the event. With hindsight the club maybe should have said it would make an announcement on Monday night or Tuesday morning that way they'd have got a few more days to raise cash before the banks and HMRC open up.

TBH even if it's a big conspiracy to keep the pledges coming (which I doubt as they're not as Machiavellian as that) in I'm not d, the main thing is that we've got a few more days to reach the total.

I'm more worried about the other £500k.

I have a suspicion that the other 500k may well be related to achieving the pledge total.

If it is, as Has been said would people want to see the club fold because they insisted on announcing the pledge had failed just because they d promised to meet a date to make an announcement?

Have none of you seen what happens when a company makes a takeover bid and is not quite up to the necessary level of acceptances by the deadline? Guess what: they extend the deadline.