I honestly can't see where Marc is supposed to be blaming the fans. All he is doing is pointing out the obvious; this is a business where the majority of income comes from the fans. Without the fans providing that income the business cannot survive with its current expenditure.

Regarding players, he has answered a question people have been debating all season; who had the final say on recruitment? Apparently Jimmy did and turned down players who would have been very useful to the team. I think the fact that there has been a sharp improvement in the quality of recruits filling the change of coach, despite Ferres still being in place, pretty much backs this up.

I don't often go on about what I do for a living but this could all have been sorted with some pretty simple crisis management principles. Any written statement or piece to the camera following a negative incident can be dealt with as follows -

PITY - I feel desperately sorry that we didn't make the play offs. Everyone is bitterly disappointed. We just didn't perform on the day and credit to Featherstone who did.

PRAISE - I'd like to thank the supporters for following us in such big numbers. Your contribution is huge. Nothing would be possible without you. Players and directors come and go but supporters stay true through thick and thin as you have demonstrated these past few seasons.

PROMISE - I promise the club as a whole will learn lessons from this and be better. We will be fully professional next year and I promise as Chairman that we will be doing everything we can to improve on this year's performances.

You can write statements like this in advance for all kinds of scenario. I've done it many times. It provides a comment which is so important in this day and age. Leaving a communication vacuum is the worst thing you can do. Rumours develop and fill it. Before you know it a poopstorm has developed needlessly. People love to speculate - just look at the news - most of it is speculation. Social media adds another dimension. You can head a lot of it off with some decent prepared statements that can buy you time.

Damn. You must have to say sorry a lot.

PITY - I'm sorry you are not satisfied.
PRAISE - You were ace though. It's not you, it's me.
PROMISE - I'll go see the doctor tomorrow.


Hey, this works. Mind if I nick it?

Feel free.

It comes with the territory



If you listen to the news you'll hear every chief exec or senior person use this formula when answering questions. Questioners try to put them off their stride by asking the whys and wherefores and you then hear the person reply by saying "First can I say how sorry I am...."

Then they go into the rest of it and repeat until end of interview.

This is a brilliant blog and an extremely good read summarising Sunday to today (I think)

[urlhttp://wobblyheadedbull.tumblr.com/post/148015837798/dont-look-back-in-anger[/url

What you think?

See that's all it would have taken.

If anyone from the club is reading I can do all this for you ready for the next big disaster so this fallout doesn't happen again. Free of charge.

I've followed this guy on twitter for a while now. I don't think he uses this forum though. But yeah he's been doing that blog ever since we were relegated (I think) and it's always a great read. I've seen a few RL journalists mentioning it on twitter today so I'm pleased for him.

I've also read the blog since he started it, and I agree, it's an excellent read almost every time.

Russ who writes it tends to have a very good knack at summing up exactly how you feel about a situation, often with plenty of humour injected in there to make it entertaining as well as emotive. I may not agree with every point he makes (and nor should anyone), but I tend to find I agree with most of them.

Brilliant piece on Sunday's game. Sums it up perfectly. Somebody buy that lad a beer.

I too remember that scrum. It did truly say it all we needed to know.