Unsurprisingly, it hasn't taken Sam long to start to reveal what we all knew"That was an upsetting factor to me; that people who are supposed to love the game are actually tearing it to shreds," he wrote, in a column for The Daily Mail.

"I felt like certain people didn’t want England and Stuart Lancaster to succeed. They were after him — so aggressively. He could never do a thing right, no matter what. I was right in the middle of that and it is unbelievable. It’s not a productive place to be.

"Some ex-players just kept letting rip. It was a losing battle from day one. I couldn’t believe it. It’s almost like they don’t want anyone else to do well in the jersey.

"That’s definitely the feeling I got in rugby union. And since the tournament, there have been players coming out in the press, leaking stories.

"I find that really disappointing and I didn’t want to stay in a sport like that. It makes it harder to build on when people from the inside are crumbling."'"

Don't sell the game short it's quite big in Auckland as well! Though admitted last season the Warriors and Sam -" I will stand around at the back" Tompkins did not set the world on fire, but the Kiwi's stuffing the Aussies this year was major news. I watched most of the RUWC matches mainly as it is against the law not to in NZ and did think most of the 2nd tier nations would be more suited to playing RL - especially the Japanese and the Islanders. Interestingly apart from celebrating the AB's win down here the main talk was if the Springboks had gone all Hansie Cronje in their first match?

"A bomb placed under the West Stand at Twickenham would set back the cause of British fascism by 50 years" - Philip Toynbee.

When I read his column in the Mail and he mentioned ex-players having 'agendas' I thought what an odd turn of phrase. As if they wanted him and England to do badly rather than them pointing out the absurdity of picking him in the first place. I got the weirdest feeling of deja vu. Like I was on this board 6 years ago when anyone who suggested the club was a plane crash waiting to happen was judged to be part of conspiracy with Chris Caisley in an 'agenda' to destroy the club.

WTF? You just made that up! Plus, Caisley didn't need an agenda, as ultimately signing Harris did the job all by itself.

Well, it definitely didn't help our cause, though I confess I have CC down as delusional, rather than having any particular 'agenda'.

Mistakes, like spending on the basis that bigger names in the side would inevitably lead to ever bigger crowds and increasing income, and then, [iblaming the people[/i for not turning up to make his dream a reality, did it for me.

Which bit? Sam Burgess in the Mail? People from within the club acting through one particular poster on this board to smear/silence any criticism by fictitious associations with the 'Dark Knight'?

Figures on Harris were published and were nothing like those which were touted on here, which of course was all part of it.

The is one Teflon Coated Tube still at the club who regularly used his Reading based poisoned dwarf to come on here and shout anyone down who dared speak out about the club in any way shape or form.

This is a guy who quite happily duped some of the clubs' most loyal supporters over signings and through his mouthpiece encouraged myself (who has openly admitted to suffer from depression) to go away and commit suicide.

Yet still he sits and steals a wage from a club who have been in almost terminal decline whilst he has been in his role.

I find it curious that people want to "hide the truth". Obviously they must be doing something wrong therefore.

However, as I have oft alluded to, there have been too many people who masquerade as fans "of high standing" that, instead of using their "influence" to speak out about the lies and mismanagement over the years, preferred to come on to board like this and stop people from stating the bloody obvious. I have always found it curious that myself, based here in Central Scotland, could see what was going on when others, who were happy to tell all how "respected" they were and were always at club events etc. appeared to be blissfully ignorant of it all. This kinda suggests that they either,

a. knew absolutely sod all despite conning people into trusting them
b. were so pre-occupied with brown-tongueing the establishment that they did their dirty work for them on here, or
c. were just blatantly telling lies.

Sad really.

I find the idea of adults on this little forum feeling that any one poster could "silence" them quaintly ridiculous. How old are these victims - 12? What a load of tosh. People say what they think, and one problem on here is some convince themselves that if they don't like X, then there must be a conspiracy to push X.

I neither know nor care if anyone acts "from within the club" or from without fscking Pluto, they are just another poster, and surely you can engage in debate with anyone whoever they are and whatever their motivation? You might be Putin's plant or Nigel Wood's mouthpiece, what difference does it make if we are discussing any given thing?

And if the club - or any club - wanted to have a voice on a forum focussed on, er, that club, what the hell is wrong with that? If they wanted to do so by anonymous proxy, again - so what? Are you saying that any views by or on behalf of the actual Bradford Bulls club and management should be banned from the Bradford Bulls forum? That's weird.

Also, what is your point on the Harris figures? And what are they"nothing like"? I don't get it. My point was that basically Caisley got Harris to get one over Hetherington, it spectacularly backfired both internally due to the strife it caused plus Harris whilst OK wasn't actually that good any more, and went even more seriously wrong at the point when for reasons that have never been made public the Bulls suddenly decided to cave, and pay a huge amount of damages to Leeds, over several season, which btw was all paid in full in hard cash, plus similar sums for legal costs. Shortly after completing these payments we went tits. Had we not done in all that cash in cold blood, maybe we wouldn't have gone tits, who knows.

I don't see any problem in people from the club coming onto the board, either incognito or as 'Bulls Official' or even a club spokesperson under their own name. I think it would be daft, not to at least read what people are saying, and to correct some of the rubbish spouted. Though, of course, you could hardly do that anonymously.

'Quaintly ridiculous'? Whatever that means you're as aware as I am that the person(s) to whom I suspect ME refers didn't agree with you to extent that they sought posters who would post information which they were not prepared to stand behind in public. You know this is true.

By doing this they spread misinformation about the costs of the Harris saga which it was suggested explained why we were an awful team rather than just an ordinary one. This was a deceit and another example was the 'vultures circling' story to explain the sale of the ground lease when in fact the club already owed the purchaser approximately half the money. This is not the same as club people leaking transfer stories.

It was an organised campaign to distract the support base from the disaster being presided over with certain posters posting thousands of words per day in pursuit of this. No doubt many will say this in the past but it is a key element in the state the club is now in and shouldn't be dismissed in the y manner FA is now attempting.

Sadly the misinformation that was spread was not reserved uniquely for the Harris case. The fans have been lied to for years by a succession of chancers, shysters and Hoodwinkers.

It is utterly embarrassing that those who claim to have some form of "clout" amongst the support came on here to try and shout down the few who had the cojones to say it as it was. These people (who we all know exist and who they are, despite FA's frankly baffling denial) should be utterly ashamed of themselves.

I have had people tell me that the reason that they stopped posting was because of me and my apparent "hatred" of all things to do with Bradford Bulls RLFC. These people quite happily sided with the club and their array of mouthpieces and buried their heads in the sand whilst the so-called troublemakers (like myself) were happy to speak out, despite the vitriol we received for doing so. (Sadly there are not as many of us around anymore as most of them were pretty much hounded off the board)

The sad thing is that these buffoons who continually defended the actions of certain people within the club and tried to decry anyone who dared to speak out about them were actually the accellerent rather than the extinguisher.

I have no clue what you're on about though. WHAT "misinformation"? What did they say about "the costs" and how do you know it was "misinformation"? What is the point you are making about Harrisgate? That the costs were much less? Much higher? This cryptic stuff is almost in ME stylee.


Er, wasn't it the RFL that provided that information? It was hardly unattributable leaks, then?

How do you know there were no "vultures" circling? (If you claim there weren't? Do You?) I know for a fact of one party who had paid a lot of money for a commercial valuation of the Odsal site. An odd thing to do if purely random?


I think a conspiracy theory such as this is silly. Like many conspiracy theories. I don't doubt that organisations very frequently use spin-doctors, hangers-on and chancers to spin their cause, of course they do, but your proposition assumes that "they" knew they were "presiding over a disaster" yet wanted to make it look as if they weren't? Have I got that right?

Why? Why would they do that? What would it achieve? Who would care?

And no disrespect to RAB, but of all the things on the mind of a person knowingly presiding over a disaster and wanting for some reason to distract the support base, trying to do so by placing anonymous lengthy posts in a medium where anything over 20 words is hardly read by more than a dozen people sounds a pretty fruit and nut method of choice to me.

What of all the thousands who supported the Pledge, and the fundraising and the rest? Were they all part of the conspiracy too?

Finally, what is it you claim I am dismissing? I would think I might be the only poster on here who has consistently supported Omar Khan and his efforts to have an open investigation into why the club, i.e. the old company, went tits.

Quite stunning how three lines of text can so disconnect the OT header from the footer running now.

Indeed Errol. I do love the off-season. The cut and thrust of sensible debate. The excitement and enthusiasm about the coming season.

If it was a few blokes arguing about the past and going off topic it'd be rubbish. Thank God that's not the case.