Didnt Gledhill put a tweet out the other night saying Fax were in financial difficulty along with a couple more clubs. He soon took it down for some reason........

A friend of mine writes for the Liverpool Echo and reports on Liverpool FC he has been told plenty of things by the club in the past with some things having to be kept secret. The Bulls need to decide what the say should be kept secret or can be made public knowledge.

I'm not one of those constantly saying that 'the club should make a statement, but I do wonder whether the complete lack of any information from the club isn't helping. Lack of information creates a vacuum, especially in our social media / instant news culture, that some are only to happy to fill with rumour and speculation. It's not just Mick, by any means, who gets sucked into filling the vacuum.

Over the past few months we've had a whole series of worrying things happening at the Bulls, and very little information about steps being taken to address them. It all started imo, with the departure of Rob Parker, who (unless I missed the memo) wasn't replaced. He's been followed out of the door by Steve Ferres and, now, (temporarily? who knows?) Robbie Paul. So far as I can see we are now down to the skeleton staff that we had during one of our Admin periods i.e Stuart Duffy doing everything! Added to which we have the curious case of our owner / chairman taking an extended foreign holiday during the season. And thats before we even start on Winding Up Petitions, HMRC, the abject failure to make the Top 4, wages not being paid, people allegedly refusing to play etc etc

Is it any wonder that speculation rises? I'm not expecting the club to feel they have to make daily statements for assuage the fans. But, come on, Marc Green is the guy that came into the club saying that he was an honest, straight forward guy who was going to totally transparent and open. Perhaps a bit more information would be a reasonable expectation?

It sounds like Mick's tweeting about impending financial difficulties were based on something said to him by an ex-director. 'Ex' being the important part of that. It was also immediately after the game had finished so no doubt the guy was having some knee-jerk reactions.

Mick ran with it, depsite the information being inaccurate. Easy to say that now with hindsight, but I guess it's always better to be prudent in those circumstances.

It's easy to forget that, above all else, Mick is just a Bulls fan like the rest of us. His hard work on the commentary scene has led him to where he is now, perhaps his enthusiasm for the club gets the better of him sometimes. If I had any advice to offer Mick I'd just remind him that he has a bit more responsibility now than perhaps he's had in the past, and to try and remain professional on social media rather than letting the Bulls fan in him get carried away.

Mick has told me who made the comments but it will hold my water. The more important thing for me is once cornered he denied it was about the club.

Mick seems to backtrack on a lot of the statements he makes. Deletes tweets when they're found to be untrue then gets indignant when someone calls him out about it. If he's going to post gossip, he can't then deny saying or doing it

I've said things like that myself, so I know where you're coming from.

However. The problem for such as Mick, and of course Ross on the T&A, is that a sort of symbiotic relationship exists between them and the club ie, they both need each other and both would be damaged if the other were to disappear. The club needs people to take an interest in the happenings at Odsal and to spread the news, so the need to keep the journos sweet is important. By the same token the journos need the club. If the club goes, or interest in what's going on around it dies, then their job goes with it.

Of course they get to know snippets that the club doesn't want to get out but the relationship between club and journo wold be damaged irreparably if they put in their bulletins, especially when specifically asked not to. That would not do anybody any good; not fans, not club, and not journalists.

I'm not entirely sure the club would be damaged if BCB fell off the air as useful as the commentary service might be to fans.

Slightly O/T but relevant to a debate about truth and honesty, I gave Mick the opportunity to be a little more transparent with his claims about listener numbers on another thread and he failed the test, claiming that the station receives a figure for the number of people listening to each commentary on FM. The only reliable measure - which takes a long term average - is Rajar which BCB don't participate in.

It's very easy to over-egg the pudding.

As the saying goes, all publicity is good publicity. Similarly if you crave attention, all attention is good attention. Even when it's because you're saying something silly.

Not hard for yous to keep financially stable, especially making the football club stump up all the rent for the ground

Well obviously to some extent it would, because then those who can't attend games couldn't listen either, and its easy to get out of the habit of going, /watching / listening - hard to get people back into the habit.



Come again? Tests? You set tests? Failed? Wow, bet he won't sleep now! Surely only existing Bulls fans - or I expect a handful of opposition fans, or bored general sports fans - who can't go, are ever going to constitute the audience? That much seems clear, and if he was the best broadcaster since John Arlott, the number wouldn't materially change, so I'm struggling to understand the point, or more to the point, whether there actually is a point.

There IS a different point though, and that is, it's a decent commentary, it's reliable and it's free. If I didn't go, I'd choose to listen to that. What else is so important to you?

The point was about hyping things up. For listening figures see cryptic tweets or vice versa. The "test" was whether he'd choose to back up his claims as the FM figures were clearly bunkum (and for what it's worth 4,000 streaming listeners seems very optimistic). Therefore, you take things with a pinch of salt.

I like the commentaries, they would be missed but certainly not by 10,000 people.

Ignore "Bulls On Fire" he's another one of the anti Mick/Ross brigade.

As I posted in the BCB thread a couple of weeks ago, the listening figures for the broadcasts fluctuate massively - is the game at home, away in West Yorkshire, away in Cumbria, on Sky Sports etc...

But I can comfortably say that the average per game this year is around the 7,500 mark - that's including both online and FM.

We get regular listeners from America, Australia, South Africa, Spain, Italy, Colombia, Russia and Ireland.

The Bradford Bulls brand is very much still alive and kicking.

On a match day the listener interaction from the supporters is so great that we're now looking for a third member to join me and Hobbo, just to specifically monitor all the communication we get snowed under with on a match day.

Tweet from Marwan Koukash - Seems to pour water on the Bulls rumours -(@drmar) I have no interest in owning another RL club . The sole focus of everyone in the club is to secure our SL status for next year.

Mick, I am not a member of any such brigade, you are a good commentator and I have enjoyed listening from time to time. However, this thread has called into question the way you present things on social media etc and as such I have cited an example where you have made claims that are not backed up by credible evidence. So, it's a question of judgement and believability.