Definitely not just you.

There seem to be a lot of smoke and mirrors at the moment, and it's hard not to wonder why sometimes, even if you think along the lines of "we don't need to know everything". Unfortunately the last few years have understandably made us all quite paranoid and whenever the club don't seem 100% up front, it's hard to not think something's up.

Stuff like the Mullaney situation. It was obviously known for weeks before he was off, so why take so long to announce it? It just screamed of "we don't want to hurt season ticket sales".

Things aren't perfect by any means, but the previous chap saying the morale of the fans is at an all time low? Well that's absolute tosh. When we first went into admin and periods thereafter I had a genuine lump in my throat and tear in my eye. I am peed off at our situation but we've been in darker places.

If our, 'organiser', scrum half can create holes for such as Lee Gaskell to stroll through then I'll be very happy. After all, that was a major part of Paul Deacon's game and he wasn't so shabby.

I've said many times that halves need to be judged as a combination and imo, an organiser is exactly what we need to complement Gasky in the halves.

I think club communication has been poor at times. I do wonder how much of that is down to a fractured relationship with the T&A. Ross has had a few run ins with Lowes and that needs to be smoothed over. The club obviously want to portray things positively as possible but you have to strike a balance. I agree about the Mullaney situation. Rumours abounded of him going for weeks before it was confirmed. Then again we don’t know all the facts of the situation, he may not have been 100% going until well after the first rumour. I agree though it’s better to get bad news out there than have it bubble away and fester as rumours.

As for the apparently wrongly lodged winding up order that sounded a bit hard to believe at the time. Still, that’s dealt with now to the satisfaction of HMRC so that can be parked – no sense in worrying about it anymore. The ground thing I think is more of an aspiration than a genuine plan that’s ongoing. The only way that will be resolved is with a substantial injection of money from a third party. The council won’t be selling anything in the current climate unless they can get top dollar. I wouldn’t interpret aspirations as a sign that we’ve got money to spend on that.

I think we just need to take what we’re told with a pinch of salt. We’ve been fed all sorts of bull**** over the past 10 years so a bit of healthy cynicism is a good idea. However there’s no need to go overboard like “Peter”. Like Pumps I agree we’ve been in far worse positions in the past. That’s not to say worse isn’t around the corner but right now we have the second best team on paper in the division (and possibly the best on the field). While promotion is unlikely due to the disparity in leagues and salary caps we’re in it and who knows what may happen in a one off game. I’m hopeful Lowes has learned lessons from last year.

I have noticed that there is a lot of 'buy this' and buy that' going on from Bradford at the moment on my news feed along with a new enticement that half of the spend goes towards something called Buy Bulls or something. eg if you spend £45.99 on a Bulls hoodie (£45.99 for a hoodie!!!!) £23 goes towards funding the team up to the new SC or something.

I read somewhere that the RFL set your maximum SC spend at £1.34M. Now this must be based on a budget for the year put forward by the club. This would suggest there are no problems wouldn't it.

The Financial penny is starting to drop, MG isn't going to spend what the Club hasn't got so apart from more or larger moneyed Sponsors it will be up to the Fans to commit to buying Season Tickets, there are too many using excuses not to, but not realising that is exacerbating the situation with regards to buying so called quality Players, as for "Peter" False Hood purporting to know the Clubs present finances, he has not said anything that is verifiable and second guessing the rest!

Don't know where you read 1.34M but it's not a figure I've seen reported by anyone.

I thought that was what yours was set at, or is that just a very similar amount?

That seems to have been the case since MG took over to be honest. Or at least certainly for the best part of a year. The website is full of news stories on how you can give more money to the club. The Twitter feed is too. And let's not forget "BullsApp" which I had to delete after a month or two as I was sick of it telling me all the ways I could spend more money rather than any actual news.

To be fair to the club, there isn't much in the way of news they can offer at the moment. We're at a traditionally low point when it comes to stories, so it's not surprising there isn't much else being trotted out. And if constantly telling people what they can spend their money on actually works and helps the club make money, who can blame them for doing it?

Personally, it puts me off even looking at the website or the Twitter feed, but I'm sure it must work to an extent or they wouldn't do it. As long as I'm in the minority, I'm not that fussed.

It was either in a LoveRugby League website article or in one of the RL papers this week. I noticed it because the figure was slightly higher than the one quoted for Leigh which was £1.31M. It was definitely in print somewhere this week as it also mentioned the BUY BULLS initiative.

So to all you affluent Bulls fans there is a Xmas Sale on and the new Premium Bulls range where it is stating half your spend goes towards the new initiative to fund the team. That is some markup on those goods if you are making a profit in excess of 50% on these goods which is what it actually suggests to me. If the markup isn't 50% then where are you finding the money for your supplier. Someone needs to start asking questions before it is too late.

edit: I have just re read the sales blurb and it seems a proverbial 50% goes towards the team based on the RFLs SC rule of '50% of relevant income'.

This is basically what we've been told. Under the new 'interpretation' of the cap rules, the cap for SL and Championship - and I assume Championship 1, is exactly the same and it's all based entirely on income. PG's statement, that 50% of shop sales [iqualifies[/i go to the team is simplistic but is just setting out what we can spend under the cap. Personally, I'm pretty sure there may well be other calls on our 'spending money', so whether we can actually spend that amount on the team, and still remain in business, might be another matter.

Incidentally, I'm surprised that some have only just noticed the higher end prices on club clothing. This is not new and has been the case for as long as I can remember, and certainly long before Marc Green became chairman. I think it's fair to say it applies to all other clubs too and most likely other sports - it certainly does in soccer. We know it's expensive, but we want to wear our clubs' colours and, ultimately the money goes to our club, so we pay it and smile......

Spot on. They've been expensive for as long as I can remember. But as you say, you grin and bear it a little more when you know the money is going towards the club you love, rather than into Mr. Debenhams' money chest. Are you being ripped off? Yeah, probably. But with the amount they sell compared to the amount big retail stores shift, they probably need a bigger markup to make it worthwhile.
It's almost like wondering why the corner shop charges 30p more for a loaf of bread than Tesco do.