I can't help feeling justified having wrote a few match previews (rlhererl and rlhererl) on my website ahead of Wigan games against Bradford going back to early 2008 predicting a massive fall for the club which has sadly come to fruition. I recall my comments sawBulls fans reply to say I was talking nonsense on our Wigan message board but the facts now speak for themselves.

A crowd of 6,382 today v Salford (a Super League record low at Odsal?) means a massive 43% has been wiped off their average attendance since they last won the league in 2005 (bare in mind thats during the reign of England's current coach). They averaged 13,894 in 2005 which is now down to 8,526 currently this season. Makes me proud as a Wigan fan that our crowds never died at all (they increased) when we found ourselves in an even worse position than Bradford are in now back in 2006. That shows true support!

So what has gone wrong? In 2005 their had back options like Robbie Paul, Leon Pryce, Lesley Vianikolo, Shontayne Hape and props like Stuart Fielden, Jamie Peacock, Adrian Morley and Joe Vagana.

Where is all that cap room being spent? I mean how can you go from Paul, Pryce, Vainikolo and Hape to players like Chris Nero, Paul Sykes, Rikki Sheriffe and Michael Platt? No wonder they are struggling.

Don't get me wrong I hope to see the days of a full Odsal return but their current plight has not come as a surprise to me. As I wrote in March 2009, I hope McNamara's youthful gamble pays off long term but from the outside I'm not sure he can be solely to blame for the clubs current plight.

They perhaps have never recovered from thier old marketing man Simon Collinson leaving them to join Wigan in 2003. Prior to him joining us we regularly had 8,000 home attendances at Wigan but we haven't had a sub 10,000 crowd since 2005 and our crowds have risen 50% in his time at Wigan. Bradford's crowds have gone the opposite way. Perhaps the reserruction of the club needs to start off the field?

No offence, because I know this isn't a troll post, but hasn't this been done to death?

Chris Caisley had a way of running the club which, though successful at the time, wasn't compatible with the way SL evolved in terms of salary cap and quota rules, when money started running out it was marketing budgets and academy investment that went by the wayside, because he believed that a strong first team could guarantee continued success.

An already worrying financial situation was then exacerbated by the Harris signing in Caisley's cock-measuring competition with -Hetherington which led to further cutbacks needing to be made - there just isn't the money to spend on the available cap space, the effects of that were further compounded by the appointment of a, in my opinion, hopeless first-team coach and it's just one big vicious circle.

The clubs decision to focus on youth development had to be done to help them compete in the future, and now this has to be backed up by an improvement with the new coach and taken advantage of by a better marketing strategy, whether that can or will be done is another matter.

I don't know to be honest. I do know that I was getting stick for predicting it though over two and half years ago. It was today's crowd that triggered my post though. 6,382!!! I know things have been bad crowd wise for a while but that still shocked me.

Two or three people I know expressed concern that things could get really bad a couple of years back, a problem on forums like these is that some people will defend their club, or any slight negative thing said about it, so it often isn't the best place to air opinions, one of the reasons I jacked in being a mod on RAB was that I was already sensing that people couldn't take the downfall very well and the resultant hassle in terms of modding the forum wasn't worth it.

Today's crowd is a bit of a shocker, but I'm not that surprised. Bradford isn't really RL crazy and never has been, in the good old days the club did brilliantly in marketing the club and getting people in, but what got them in isn't being offered anymore - so why expect people to keep coming?

What got them in to start with?

Games were more like events than sports matches, there was a sense of occasion built up, there was a lot going on around the ground, the team were doing well and it was something new to a lot of people. I grew up at the other side of Bradford to where Odsal is and you wouldn't know RL existed back then in the late 80's/early 90's.

The club also did very well in targetting nearby areas that were more traditional RL territory, but people there were always more likely to be tempted away.

Its a shame what has happend to the bradford club with their currant form and attendances, but if the football club in that city can draw avg 12k why cant the bulls.

Football is a more popular sport than rugby league and as Asim as pointed out unlike Wigan and Hull Bradford is not truly a rugby city. Granted there are areas in Bradford where the sport is popular (mainly close to Odsal) but in many areas rugby league was simply not on the radar until Bullmania started. The football club does not have the same problems due to the popularity of the sport. City also offer a great deal on season tickets which helps attract supporters who would otherwise be put off of watching league two football at £20 per game.

This is an argument that can be levelled at most cities in the UK, in that supporters are a very fickle animal, and will only watch a quality product on offer. The best comparison to be made is between the respective cities of Bradford and Hull. If you go back to the turn of the last century both sporting clubs in Bradford were experiencing success and this was reflected in the average attendances at those clubs. Meanwhile in Hull the football club averaged about 5k, FC about 3.5k and Rovers were struggling to get 1.5k through the turnstiles. In less than 10 years the averages of all 3 clubs has taken a massive leap, due to their being a (ahem) quality product on offer.

Bradford's time may come again, but an awful lot of hard work needs to be done. Starting now.

Without the season ticket deal in operation at Valley Parade City's crowds would be about the same as the crowds as we are now seeing at Odsal.

Despite what some may think my personal experience tells me that the fact both City and the Bulls had a good few years from '96 helped the other club as both markedly increased their attendances, it created a sporting feel-good factor in the City and made people want to go out and watch games for another fix.

City had an ace up their sleeve to play with Stuart McCall that helped the cheap ticket deal become a success, I'm not sure there really would be an equivalent at Odsal.

Free sponge fingers and face painting.

Well why dont bradford reduce season ticket prices as next years sales could be worse than this years, but to get just over 5k for a SL game shows our sport up

That's the nub of it, there's a generation of fans thinking they are Man U or Liverpool that have now ebbed away. An apt analogy would be Nottingham Forest, an era of success far greater than could reasonably be expected.

Another factor is that Bradford has a big asian community which is not intrested in RL, the only way our club will get better imo is if we have a Hetherington or Lenagan at the club.

glory?
i remember a few years back when bulls fans were all over huddersfield and telling us how they wouldn't support giants cos they were rubbish and how bulls fans would be on our board lording it over us calling us pathetic,crap,worthless,our team was crap,our support was crap,how we could only dream of having half the support bradford have,how we would never be able to compete with bradford,how bradford would dominate the game for decades. . . sadly those supporters soon did a runner when the trophies and the glory dried up, we tried to tell them but they wouldn't listen now look at them, and whats more, hardly any bulls fans have been seen in huddersfield for the last 3 years