I agree it doesn't add up unless we're really done well with the sponsorship or the amount of fulltimers is going to be an absolute minimum.

Otherwise we're looking at a 90% part time squad. We should find out one way or the other over the next 4-5 months. If it's a Hemel standard squad then those of us holding out to see won't be part of the 3000. Not sure where they're coming from.

I don't mind a ST freeze as long as we get a competitive squad.

However, if this is the start of the rebuild, we need the kids on board. Free season tickets for all Bradford school kids. I don't think we'll lose a huge amount of money by giving them away

Also i don't think kids get quite as hooked up on the fact we're playing Hemel as what we do. If they see us winning and scoring lots of tries every week they'll want to come everyweek.

Also they'll soon lose interest if we're scraping wins over Hemel so we need a proper squad that's intending to get promoted.

Over to you Chalmers!

Hope we do get some decent numbers because plenty of C1 sides sure aren't packing them in.

977 at Barrow
562 at Whitehaven
441 at Workington
333 at Hunslet
268 at Coventry
114 at Hemel
65 SIXTY FIVE! at Oxford.

660 at Swinton yesterday. Say if 300 were Bulls fans they're the definite hard core. Chalmers is aiming for 10 times that amount to sign up for a season ticket.

Why not offer ST at a cheap price if we sold say 10k. That worked in the past, we sold loads.

I genuinely don't know where they're getting 3,000 season tickets at the same prices as the division above from. It makes no sense.

Unless of course the conspiracy theories proved correct. Because aiming for 3,000 at the same price whilst in the same division, WOULD make sense.

I actually think it would a stretch in the Championship, given the general discontent and malaise around the Bulls these days

Perhaps, but it's much easier sold. "This season we won't start on -12 and we've had plenty of time to get a team together, instead of cobbling together all those who were too crap to get another club with a week's notice, so we must have a better chance in the competition than last year". I suspect they'd word it slightly better, but I'm sure that would be the subtext.

(Or at least they'd try and word it better, until the numb bugger in charge of the website had to type it up)

As I said earlier in the piece, I'm not getting hung up on the number of STs we sell, the overall attendance figure is the important one to me.

If there are positive vibes about the club, which is essentially a squad which looks as though it can hold its own and no bad news before the season starts.....then I think, given fair results, we can gradually build on the ST sales with some decent roll-up figures. As always, there too many things we don't know, too many things we think we know, but don't and probably too many things we don't even know we don't know.

1st game of the season at home to say Keighley, could see a reasonable size (for this league) crowd.
An opening win could kindle interest if we have free kids tickets - and that's what we need.
Most of us probably started watching as young kids - and once the bug bites - you're a Bulls fan for life.
I keep wanting to say the only way is up, but I'm not that confident yet

On the bright side. Should we play Keighley early doors, in theory we will have a better side, more experience and a proper pre-season compared to the 25-24 loss in this seasons friendly!!

O.K. If you think the fixture next year could be strange have a look at the way the NFL work out their fixturesTHE ANATOMY OF THE NFL SCHEDULE

Each NFL team plays 16 games over the 17-week season. The league uses a formula to determine all 256 matchups.
The league’s 32 teams are split into two conferences — the American Football Conference (AFC) and the National Football Conference (NFC). The 16 teams in each conference are split into the East, North, South and West divisions; every division has four teams.

Here’s how each team’s opponents are set[/i

simples.

The advantage of such a conference system over here, if you could accept not playing everyone home and away every year, would be the ability to add expansion teams or remove/punish failing teams without completely ruining the structure for the rest of the competition. You can also weight the fixture list so the weaker/new teams play each other more than the likes of Leeds, cas and wigan, hopefully avoiding too many blow outs.

Problem is its a much more even competition in the NFL across all teams than UK rl, and I'm not sure I'd trust the rfl with the required fixture algorithm.

There's the key factor that we don't have over here - stability. Can anyone seriously imagine that the RFL could let the structure of the leagues to stay the same for even two years, let alone four???