While I don't think Potter is covering himself in glory at the moment the salary cap era, and (IMO) dearth of quality players makes it a lot harder for a club or coach to rebuild a squad when it has been decimated by a few years of poor recruitment - which is the situation with the squad at Odsal at the moment.

I think it took Wigan, a club with more muscle and clout than Bradford at the moment, about three years to get their squad into serious challenging contention after having to repair the damage done by the Millward reign and the short term solutions they had to make to avoid relegation. It shows the long term implications that getting it badly wrong can have for a club.

As anyone thought mick potter doesn't want the job but if he walks away would lose out on payments etc, i may get a ripping for this but a very close source suggested this to me last year with some of potters actions in terms of selection and to me he doesn't seem to care less. Win lose or draw his response is always the same, he should of come out and slammed the bulls for such an horrendous score line at home and apologised to the supporters.
Complete overhaul needed at the bulls, i'd sooner see young enthusiastic players wanting to put effort in , couldn't lose by much more. Our conditioning is a joke , firstly the 30 % fitter comment, yeah losing the 2nd half 34-6 and regardless of "some injuries unavoidable " i honestly believe the players are not conditioned correctly, every single year there are 4 or 5 major long term injuries, no other club suffers like we do, yes maybe 1 or 2 long term but ours year on year is ridiculous . The bulls need to be very very careful, without some form of a push for the playoffs (which i think is miles away) this pledge thing wont stand for another year, they would have to drop them to £50 and even then would struggle for more than 5k imo. The fact hood has stated we are full capacity on the cap shows 1 of 2 things, either 1- he is lying or 2- we are paying way over the odds for some players.

Agree with Asim - its very difficult to build a decent team quickly now. The supply of quality Aussies/Kiwis has really dried up, which was the easiest quick fix available. Add the fact that clubs are now seeking to contract good young players for much longer, and the supply of good quality (or even highly promising) players available each year for transfer is very small.

I'm not sure I agree with this time to gel excuse. A decent coach will get the best out of his players & adapt his game plan to suit. Wakey (who don't even have the benefit of a decent coach) started with 13 new players & have done better than I expected, Maguire got the best out of a team comprised of a number of average players. Having said that McDermott's ideas obviously took time to work at Leeds.

In my experience the really good coaches can provide a visible improvement in very little time, often without having to spend much. Such men are thin on the ground though.

If you look at how Maguire transformed Wigan and Smith at Leeds then Warrington you see that they have what it takes. We need a dynamic new man in charge who can revolutionise things and get us out of the malaise we've been in for years.

Aside from the coaching there was someone on radio 4 last night saying that poor performances can be directly linked to the people in charge in a company as their philosophy has a knock on effect right down the chain. Get the right people at the top and things will improve at the bottom. I know we've had trouble attracting new people to the board but this is an area where an injection would have most beneficial effect. It needn't be a massively rich injection either, perhaps just some new ideas and a new approach.

I get fed up pf people referring to this sort of issue as an "excuse". It would only be an "excuse" if it was used to "excuse" something, such as the dire defence against Wigan. Don't think it's been referred to in that way.

Obviously for any great team, you start from a base, and as the team plays and builds together, it improves year on year until after a few seasons you can end up with a Man U, a Barcelona, or indeed a vintage noughties Bulls.

Of course, very, very few teams go all the way to achieving greatness, but the process is the same for any new team, and to say that a team will improve a lot once the players get to know each other's styles, have experience of playing in the same team in actual games, and get an understanding of what each is capable of / likely to do / not do, is to me just statin' the bleedin' obvious. Nor will long term injuries in key positions do anything to help the process. Again, no "excuse", just a truism.

The other side to this is that if a club signs a player who performs above expectation his image attains a value. Rangi Chase would be an example at a club without a sugar daddy. Whilst the points about virtuous and vicious cycles are valid it remains the case that I cannot think of one player signed in the last 5/6 years whose 'image value' could be said to have increased whilst at the Bulls.

A further point is that image rights deals are surely traceable by the RFL and HMRC. If the players image was used to sell cars for instance, then it would be a simple matter to ascertain if the figure was out of keeping with other similar deals. I'm not arguing that this isn't a benefit but that the scale of benefit to a particular club needs to be kept in perspective. I've found no evidence of the 'French RL players don't pay tax' thesis.

The final and for me, key point is why when despite being years into a long and painful decline during which we astonishingly still get 10000 season ticket holders are we absolutely untouchable to the type of person(s) who routinely queue up to buy smaller, less well supported and hugely less successful clubs? There was a point on sunday afternoon when I felt the RFL deal to buy Odsal was a bad thing if only because it has underwritten more of the dreadful same. At the fans forum Paul Medley suggested we are being outbid for young talent by teams like Wakefield.

The tension here is between the management of the club and the ownership of the club and I'm not sure where theories on how other clubs circumvent the cap, as thorough and well explained as yours always are, really take us.

Shad Royston & Nick Scruton are 2 off top of my head. not to mention all the youngsters who nobody knew when we signed em

They've signed third party image rights deals have they?

You said you can't think of a player whose image value could have increased.

You didn't say you cant think of one who signed third party image right deals.

If you meant that, than fair enough. Put what you mean in future.

I think you are where we were last year with Morgan. We drew 36 all with a full strength saints with no halfbacks and no hookers for the last 10 minutes but when asked his thoughts on the game Sandercock went straight in with disappointment in the decision making in the last 5 minutes and if we defend like that next week wire will put 70 on us! I like the cut of his jib.

Hull made the top 8 last year, so lets take your plan of been "realistic" and not bothering to pur a performance up and getting hammered 50+ points against the top teams. So lets write off Warrington, Wigan, Catalans, Leeds, Huddersfield & Saints. So we are left with Widnes, Salford, London, Hull KR, Hull FC, Wakefield & Castleford. play each of them teams twice thats 14 games. We have to win all but one of them games to make the play offs. Thats not going to happen. If we were to win 10 of them games it would be an exceptional achievemnt. That means we have to beat the top teams if we want to make the play offs.

again, being realistic, its no surprise we lost to Wigan on the 3rd game of the season.

did you think we would win?

I expect the team to perform better against the big teams, but i'm prepared to let them get used to each other before branding the season a failure (after round 3).

Some fans expect us to sign class players and then finish top - lets not get carried away!

Look at the fixtures, our first 4 home games couldn't have been much harder. Let the players find some form, then we will see them competing with the top teams. Calling for potters head after round 3 just seems a little premature.

But like somebody said on another thread i think,

Its not potters fault with all the errors that are being made on the field and the penalties the players give away which leads to losing field position, you cant blame potter for:- tackling players in the air, holding down, knock ons, forward passes. not finding touch with a penalty or infact when a player gets injured,

Yes potter may of had a game plan but when a PLAYER misses a tackle and other players have to compensate for this it leave gaps ie. Crookes coming accross to stop richards then the ball being passed back over where crookes was no where to be seen,

Personally and this is only my OPINION but wigan made us look that bad cos on the day they really were that good, wigan are a fast team and have learnt how to have a fast play the ball and that is what run us ragged from breaking the line and us having to compensate out of position.

If that makes sense ha

[sizeex·cuse/[/sizeikˈskyo͞oz/Verbclutching at straws [/size Out of desparation, the act of reaching or stretching for a solution, no matter how irrational or inconsequential. Literally - a drowning person who, unable to find any substantial floatation immediately at had, attempts to save himself from certain death by grabbing hold of a few stray pieces of straw floating on the water within arm's length.