Smokey, whilst you make many valid points regarding Wakefield’s “Tinpot” existence, your berating of the club appears biased to me.

Whilst you have, on many occasions, explained the reasons as to why you have “issues” with the club, I have never seen a similar stance regarding the Bradford debacle.

Wakefield had to claw their way back into SL and faced year after year of relegation battles, whereas Bradford had it all, the large crowds & seemingly endless success, but not once have I seen you refer to their recent leadership as “Tinpot”

This thread isnt about Bradford, its about Wakefield and Cas. If it were i would have been critical of them, If you look back you would see I was very critical of them. Chris Caisley did some very good things, but when the time came to stand up and sort the issues, he wasn’t there, Peter Hood was almost the very embodiment of what I am talking about, a man who looked for excuses and not for solutions, blamed big bad meanies for their problems and whose only idea in terms of marketing was to devalue the tickets then get the begging bucket out. As I said, this applies throughout the game.

Well Smokey to give tou credit you do acknowledge the potential of Wakefield and do not regard us as small club which many on the VT wrongly do.
Also I do agree that negativity is the mantra of many RL fans.
That I cannot understand ,we should be shouting from the rooftops the positive aspects of our great game.
I have for over 50 years and indeed still do over here in France.

Not sure what the top attendances were this year but who has an average above 17k?
I'm less bothered about being tin pot if the whole league is tin pot. I agree we all need to improve but I think you are trying jump things along a little to quickly.

If 10k is minimum it'll be a small league.
Minimum in terms of target? Absolutely.

No-one, but Leeds and Wigan have broken that figure before, and arent miles away now. Its not a figure which is impossible, we have proven that.
Why? Wakefield could easily be a flagship club, why be happy being tinpot because a few others are?

would it? Leeds, Saints, Wigan, Wire, Hull, Bradford are all above that figure, Les Catalans are only a little under that , thats half the league already there.

No I'm not - I'm just being realistic; in your obtuse world, every team in SL had a poor season relative to the teams that finished above them. In the real world, Wakefield had a decent season relative to their previous season, which is a more satisfactory benchmark. I don't think we're at the point yet of using Wigan or Warrington as our statistical neighbour; that will come later.



Given that you've already accepted that these things can't be fixed overnight, that's a nonsense argument; attendances have improved quite significantly and they look set to continue to do so. Would you advocate that unless we're able to get 17k next season, we should just give up?



I'm not arguing that; regardless of what some supporters said at the time, Mr Glover invested the money the RFL told him to, to satisfy the requirements of his temporary licence and buy some time so that NM could be moved on.



Again, here we can agree; all clubs have had long enough to sort themselves out and in an ideal world, would have done; in WTW's case though, in the absence of a time machine, Mr Glover can't do anything about the preceeding 16 years - he appears to be doing his best to change things for the future though, not least the poor crowds and unsuitable facility. I don't advocate ignoring the past, but I don't see much value in banging on about who should have done what and when.



Another point of agreement and all good stuff - with respect to the negative fan base though, I'd suggest that your insistence on pointing to the failures of the previous regime at WTW as a counterpoint to the (relative, modest) successes of the current one, put you firmly in that camp, at least where our club is concerned.

No you aren’t being ‘realistic’ you are accepting mediocrity. Wakefield could have won the play-offs, they could have won the challenge cup, they could have finished higher in the table, they could have got to a final it wasn’t impossible for them to do so, it was difficult I accept, but it wasn’t close to impossible.
The only reason it is looked on as being ‘unrealistic’ for a club like Wakefield to do this is because you look at them as a small club and dont expect things from small clubs. So mediocrity is celebrated until it mediocrity becomes de facto success.
To give another example, you, along with other Wakefield fans have bemoaned a perceived difference in treatment between Wakefield and Bradford in their hours of need. You, along with other Wakefield fans have complained that Wakefield’s survival wasn’t perceived as important as Bradfords, if you want to be treated as having the same importance as Bradford then you should expect to be judged on the same standards as Bradford. Nobody pretends Bradford would class Wakefields season last year, as a ‘good season’.

I haven’t advocated them giving up. Just that they accept it is only the first small step, and not ‘an achievement’ or ‘Success’
And you have stated it was a waste of money.

I haven’t blamed Mr Glover, as I said I think he has done a ‘good job’ so far. I just don’t think we should be resetting the clock every time there is a takeover of a club. Of course there is a bedding in period but the clock is always ticking. And im not banging on about who should have done what and when. Im saying something which is largely the opposite. That what has gone before isn’t really an excuse for us to have lower expectations of clubs, we should expect and demand more from them.

Im not being negative about Wakefield, i am being positive about them. I think a 30% increase is 'good' i think 7-8k averages arent. I accept, and hope that this is the start of the growth Wakefield can have, i accept it may not be and they may not reach that level. We should praise them for their improvements, we shouldnt ignore the fact that there are still failings.

The only person not doing that is you.



I haven't seen any evidence of anyone doing that; can you provide examples?

What a completely bizarre last few pages, talk about arguing for the sake of it especially when no fan or employee at the club doesn't think there's a hell of a lot more to do for us to realise it's full potential, in reality we're only 2 years into the journey of something that will more than likely take 5 or 6 years or more.

Ateotd no one at Wakefield has ever said this is as far as the club can go, no one has said we're happy with 8k attendances and shouldn't continue to improve, no one has ever said we are happy to just squeeze into the playoffs and that's as good as it gets for us, no one as ever said we shouldn't continue to improve our junior program, no one has never said we shouldn't improve our revenue streams. The owner and supporters all know if we carrying on doing the right things, on and off the pitch as well as get Newmarket up and running we'll realise it's massive potential.

But there's nothing wrong at all in giving praise for improvements that have been made at the club since Glover took over, maybe if you're club had been where ours has you would fully appreciate the works it's taken to get here because it wasn't that long ago it all nearly ended for us.

I do hope Leeds follow up on the initial enquiry with regards taking the "Esso garage stand" over to Headingley if/when Wakey move.

It's to be hoped Smokey hasn't got kids, his assessment of a school report would border on child abuse!

Indeed,

Imagine if the poor blighters took up any kind of athletics

"So you think you can celebrate a little because you've just beaten your personal best running the 100m in 10.5 seconds! Ridiculous!! Other people can run it in under 10 seconds! You are a tinpot child!"

Just out of interest why does Andrew Glover insist that everyone call him Mr Glover ?

He doesn't, I think someone pulling your change. Though I believe he prefers Andrew over Andy.