You joined RLFANS just to post that....BLESS ! Pathetic

Haha, I know.
I’d be surprised if we went up but you just never know, team spirit has carried us a long way in the past (86/87) and these guys ate channeling that spirit. If we don’t go up I think you guys will be OK as you are a good proposition to somebody, good ground, good crowds.
Derek did his best but had no patience, you would have gone back up if you’d kept your squad from last year with a couple of additions.

Norman , Similarily with Bradford ' if you produce them it is almost impossible to keep them , there are several players at our SL neighbours ( England Internationals ) who we had at scholarship level but were ' poached' at academy induction

You have to consider the return on investment

I'd like to thank Neil and Derek for getting us promoted to SL and for being competitive in it , we genuinely were a bounce of a ball or a dodgy refs call from staying up

This is very true, and to add context. If Jack Smith had correctly called out Nick Scruton for not getting to his feet at the PTB and awarded Leigh the most blatant RL penalty I have ever seen, Leigh would have finished 3rd in the 8's and auto qualified. That is the margin.

One call would not have brought about that result. If you had won that match the whole scenario would have changed. For example we would have fielded a much more experienced team against Catatalan. That was a match we only just lost fielding a very weakened team as we had already qualified.

Im not saying that you would not have stayed in SL only that it is not as simple as you make out.

Yes, but Leigh would have been in the ascendancy from a flying qualifiers start but it is all irrelevant. The club also made some poor decisions but my point was to highlight that we also suffered some terribly bad luck with a very competitive team, mainly holding its own, first season back in SL.

That may be true but it doesn't alter the fact that that was a truly awful decision and we had a lot of those go against us last year and not just from referees. The disciplinary decision to allow Greg Bird to play in the million pound game was a joke.

I agree with the Bird situation but every team could claim to be at the wrong end of decisions.

Reffy , the very 1 st tackle of the 2017 SL season should have seen Paul McShane red carded for his spear tackle on Gareth Hock , he wasn't and that set the tone for the rest of the year , countless times we got the smelly end of the stick

So my point being to the OP is that Derek showed true loyalty to the coach who got us promoted and barring some atrocious bad luck and timid riffing would have kept us there

It is always easier after the event to say this or that should/shouldn't have happened

I think McShane received a three game ban the following week for that tackle Imagine had the tacklers been reversed? Hock would have been sent straight off and the Sky Boys would have been saying; there goes Hock again
As people have said there was a catalogue of errors that seriously affected the outcomes in our Matches!
An incident missed/ignored was Cas player McMeekin's 'swinging arm' that poleaxed Glen Stewart who had to leave the field and subsequently missed a couple of weeks thereafter! that was Kendall's nightmare match when DB was fined for criticising him
Jamie and Bird was the worst though, I see Bird picked up another four game Ban for dangerous play, that can complement his Oscar for braking Reynolds Nose! before he was unconscious mind

But that is exactly what people are doing quoting instances where decisions, luck etc were against us. I am sure most if not all teams could say the same. It is no use using “what ifs” as excuses, we weren’t good enough.
Doesn’t anyone think that we were ever fortunate in getting a dodgy decision in our favour?

The tone of your comments suggests that the team were not to blame for not making the 8s, it was those pesky refs and the RFL that had it in for us.A theme that ran on here all season.
You should have added that no other team had dodgy decisions given against them to confirm the whitewash.

Setting up your academy is really worth it. Done properly it could save your club in future crises. If we hadn’t had an academy we wouldn’t have been able to put a side out at the beginning of 2017 and that could’ve meant the end of the club. Players that come through the academy are usually more loyal to the club and liable to stick around. Look at the long serving players Leeds have had through their academy. At ours we lost some to big clubs (Trueman) but kept others (Ryan) simply because of that loyalty. We’ve got 12 academy products in our squad.

As for competition from other clubs there is plenty of talent out there that is passed over. We’re far from the biggest club in Yorkshire yet our academy is 4th in the league table. It’s about the quality of coaching and a genuine pathway to 1st team as much as it is down to club prestige and money. God knows prestige and money is in short supply in Bradford. Also if Newcastle can run a very decent academy up there in football land then Leigh certainly can.

I’d also recommend a reserves team too as it can net plenty of 19 year olds and over that have been put on the scrapheap by other clubs. If us, Fax and Keighley can afford it you can, even on a tighter budget.