Chalmers wasn't supposed to be on his own.

Wood and the RFL hand picked the dynamic duo of Lowe and Chalmers who both knew they were getting the club before liquidation.

People who'd thrown their hats in the ring before and were preparing new bids were told not to bother doing so again and the club was subsequently liquidated.

My guess is the Lowe/Chalmers partnership was meant to get us to the time Nigel quit the IRFL and then 'sell' to him. It looks like Chalmers, left to his own devices, went rouge and got delusions of walking the team out at Wembley.

I still believe Nige had a plan, whether that would benefit him more than the Bulls remained to be seen but if rumours are true and Mrs Wood is divorcing him and taking 50% he's in a precarious position both clubwise and personally.

We may well be collateral damage if he's made a lot of 'loans' to the club and she wants that money back as part of her settlement.

You can only speculate that he had the money to buy the lease, move us out and sell the land and make a pretty penny... he talked about it enough but it looks like it's coming off the rails.

I honestly don't buy the idea of Wood taking us over to benefit himself. Of all the ways to benefit financially, owning an RL club isn't one of them. Even the the talk of Odsal, the RFL brought odsal over a decade ago. I honestly don't believe there was anything more to it than the RFL totally crapping themselves that a big RL club was on the verge of going bust, panicked and bailed us out, which just damaged everyone as a result.

I believe he probably does want the club to do well, but whether he has the finances and competency to back that up is another argument.

Best laid plans springs to mind.

Its the same old cyclical conversation. We all know there was something extremely odd about the way our new owners have been appointed. We know that people with money were overlooked in favour of people who had none. But not one of us can come up with a compelling reason why we've been meddled with in this way. Someone had a plan for Bradford and manipulated ownerships to achieve it. But what was the plan, and is it still a plan or did it fail?

My own belief is that jumping into bed with stock cars was the first sign it was failing.

I assume the big idea was, acquire the lease, CBMDC sell the land in totality, pay out the leaseholder whilst putting a smaller more affordable stadium on Dickie Dunns and we're SL ready - home wise if not team wise.

Then
- BoZo levels everything up
- Covid strikes further levelling up
- Putin has a brainfart REALLY levelling up
- Someone decides Dickie Dunns should be listed
- Mrs Wood decides enough is enough
- JK bores the remaining fans away with the one-up fest whilst simultaneously losing the dressing room

I actually feel sorry for him...he must be under immense pressure.

Should we ask Nestegg for an update?

This is the only plan that I could see at the time. And it’s gone now. The only plusses are we seem to be stable and keeping within a budget. And that’s it. The only remaining pipe dream is that somehow the City of Culture legacy will allow the council some leeway to trickle money into sport, including RL in Bradford. But that’s 2025…

Being stable and keeping to a budget needs to be sold somehow. Difficult. Because if it looks like doing just enough to scrape into the play offs every year for the foreseeable future then you'll not get many takers which in turn hits budgets and makes even that basic aim harder to meet.

Capital of Culture legacy is quite tenuous and probably too far down the track for us now.

We need to back the new coach (whoever he is) so that finishing in the play offs actually happens. Winning rugby is what is needed. A tilt a promotion is probably out of the question at the moment but it should be the aim eventually otherwise people will lose interest. Fans want to see positives and a sense that things are improving - which isn't the case right now.

I'm not sure which part of the 600k news is the more startling. That somehow a guy using the RFL's bank account found enough idiots to give him 600k in credit. Or that Nigel Wood, having previously had no involvement, arrived and [ipumped 600k in of his own money[/i to clear those debts. Something tells me Wood didn't actually say this himself.

Very well put.

How do you sell this season to punters though? We all knew who the top 2 teams would be before a ball was even kicked. There's no excuse for some of the performances we've put in this season and we should still be competitive against the teams around us, but realistically we were never going to achieve anything this season and I think everyone knew that.

It's a really hard sell but I can't really blame Nigel for not wanting to spend any more than is necessary in a season where others are spending such astronomical amounts.

This restructure can't come quick enough because the Championship has been completely busted for years. Leigh will most likely win this division and gain promotion into a league where the side they are currently fielding wouldn't even be eligible under the operational rules. Make that make sense.

I honestly think we've got very modest aspirations as fans, which are more than achievable. We want to to see some graft, pride in the shirt and to look like they care. I view games against Feath and Leigh as a distraction like a cup tie to be honest. All I've aspired for has been for us to be competitive with all the "best of the rest" sides. That in itself would be an achievement. Our fans do not deserve to see us play a local derby against 12 men in the way we did. Its offensive. But the past is gone, and there's time to show pride and endeavour enough to cheer us up a bit.

Nail on the head. I'd be happy to get 100% behind a side that was playing decent rugby and realistically aiming for 3rd. That would be an improvement on every season since 2015. I don't think I'm alone. That's what we should be aiming for.

My aims now are to make sure no team, apart from Fev and Leigh “do the double” over us. And if by some miracle we go to Halifax, Sheffield, Barrow and York and win - that proves to me that Odsal is a playing liability as well as a financial one.

The debt was publicly known, I think I could’ve worded it better. I remember reading an interview where it was said he could’ve placed the club into administration and cleared the debts but the hierarchy felt for once the club needed to do the right thing. That was a big tick for me. Things are far from perfect but would people sacrifice good deeds and intentions for danger/higher % of success?