Looking at the champ table, it's not certain we'll actually be playing Keighley next season. It's squeaky bum time right now as far as they are concerned.

There'd be a certain irony in that

They've been waiting for nearly 20 years for us to fall from grace and they might fall further down still

Two thing I'll be doing differently;

1. Not rushing out to buy my season ticket ASAP, I'll wait until news - any news - drips out and get it in the last week of Early Bird.

2. Buy it on credit card!

So somewhere around 80% don't think they will be packing it in. I find that very encouraging, and so should the Bulls. If I was expecting anything then it'd probably have been maybe 50-50 so this is great stuff.

Yes - but you are sampling a section of Bulls fans who also spend their time on RAB - so pretty hard core supporters. If you take the current gates of around 5000 then if 80% turn up next season it would give the club the 4000 they are looking for. However the vast majority don't come onto RAB - so for the balance I would suspect they will want to see more evidence we can get a competitive squad assembled for next seasons campaign. Fans will just about be resigned to life in the 2nd tier - but probably ease their pain by assuming we will quickly head up the pack next season - but a few early defeats next year and maintaining the gates will get a whole lot harder.

Not sure I'd agree that all RAB members are "hard core" supporters - I have the feeling we have a pretty representative cross-section of the 5000. But just my feeling. If we do have a successful enough start to the year I don't see any reason why we can't get 4K. I do think optimism will be fragile, though, and if we start next year appallingly, as if we've learned nothing, then crowds would be in big trouble. Nobody is going to turn up to many more no-shows or disinterested drubbings.

Another article today urging us to tell all our friends and family to come on down to the fabulous wonderdome. It doesn't take a psychologist to know that issuing the same tired old crap about how the fans simply MUST play their part is starting to wear decidedly thin.

The club has announced buggerall about our 2015 squad so frankly, until they do, they can shut the effup telling us what we should and shouldn't do in supporting them.

Quite. I've read the thing 3 times now and he doesn't actually say anything, it's just all ifs and buts. I mean, ""I think we'll see a different sort of mentality from the board towards the fans," wtf?

I am completely unaware of what mentality (if any) has been shown to me as a fan from the board. What was it? Is it bad? Why is the change (whatever it is) necessary?

The T&A also published an interview with Solly the other day. If and when we get to the point where we have to compete with and beat SL teams in 2015 then we will have to do so with a squad based on a £1million salary cap whereas our SL competitors will have players up to a £1.6m cap.

Next year we will got £0.75m distribution whereas our SL competitors will get £1.6m.

Yep, we will start off before a ball is kicked on £850,000 less than our SL competitors. That is before you factor in the inevitably drastically worsened relative positions in terms of season ticket sales and gate money.

It is all very well Solly claiming to the T&A (as if this were somehow a positive) that that distribution is more than we've been receiving this year and last - we know, Solly. And look where it has left us.

The article in the T&A states that the club are still thinking about going to the high court. Yet the Bulls website from nearly a month ago states clearly that the club ARE going to the high court. Seems the more things change the more they stay the same and the lies from the board room keep coming

Whereas League Express reported (although I didn't read that section myself) that we'd be dropping it, I'm surprised that hasn't made the T&A yet.

The League Express thing basically said “a source at the club” had said they weren’t going to take it any further because we have no chance of catching Salford (which anyone reading this board could have told you two months ago) – which if true begs the question why bother saying you are going to launch action in the first place. Mind you the LE also said a couple of weeks back that the Bulls wanted to be in court within a week, so who knows. Maybe they need to have a word with their source.

Have to say it does wind me up the constant waffling on about the fans need to do their bit – yeah we will if you do yours and not keep saying “we can’t do it ourselves” and make it look like you might not quite know what you are doing.

Don’t think the constant chat about “bring friends who used to be here when we were league champions” helps – a more apt comparison (although one the club should look at in private rather than parrot in the press) is that it was only a few years ago we had 10,000+ season ticket holders. Now I’m not a moron, that’ll never happen again, but it shows there is a willingness to support the club from about 5-6000 lapsed fans – and let’s not forget we were watching some rubbish rugby at that time and probably some of the worst we’ve seen at Odsal in SL outside of this year. Maybe the following administrations have permanently eroded any goodwill, but I don’t think issuing a rallying call for existing fans to get more people through the door is going to have any positive effect. If anything it almost makes me want to not go out of spite (although that would clearly be stupid).

Absolutely right. Not a single fan ever paid through a turnstile as a result of being publicly admonished by a chairman or club officer, and I'm astonished that they still come up with this stuff. It's the 21st century ffs. The notion of significant numbers of lapsed fans paying back in through a sense of obligation awoken by a jolly good ticking off and pep talk is faintly dotty.

Now if Ferres or whoever is in charge of marketing came up with (for example) some sort of attraction for any given one-off game, if they fired people's imagination then we might be able (and willing) to get one or two people to come along for the laugh.

Ferres said that I .. ie me ... and that YOU "NEED TO" get more people to come.


No, Steve Y_O_U need to do that. The people I know who used to come but no longer do will never come back unless and until THEY see that there is something THEY want to attend. I think it is both pointless and insulting to tell me that I "need to" get these people to come back, as if it's MY fault therefore if they don't. I have many times seriously considered joining them. So don't be having a go at me.

Caisley gave us a stern talking to a decade or more ago. It's good that the tried and tested tactic is still being employed. Crowds of £20k await.

It's a question of trust.

We've had Peter Hood's Comedy Ali style of lying about how everything is fine.
Then Omar and his merry men with their questionable business acumen.
But always we've had lie upon lie and the fans have had enough and Ferres and Green need to understand that.

Now, the BOD might be doing stirling work behind closed doors, but the fans haven't seen it. There's this master plan of Green that Ferres keeps alluding to but no one seems to know what it is.

And so it comes back to trust and the honest answer is the fans do not trust the board.