The recruitment policy was deluded (unless a relegation fight was the target).

Lose to Dewsbury 1st May, and we will know where we will be next season...

Saying that lose to Dewsbury in front of only 500 fans, and I don't expect Broncos to be around next season

Me neither

Northerners won’t come,

Think that should read northerners cant afford to come. housing and cost of living makes it way out of their price range. If they are playing part time rugby they need a very high salary and they still wont be able to afford the standard of living they currently have. Rent £1200 minimum for a small 1 bed flat 2 beds if they are lucky. Council tax add a further £50 to £60 per month to what they pay now, Add another £1000 for the same car, add on top of this food and petrol increases. Most people who live in the south are normal people struggling to pay bills like everyone in the north and not the affluent people who play football, rock stars, actors, merchant bankers, MPs, stock brokers etc etc that everyone thinks they are

I'm tempted to ask if there was a recruitment policy in 2022 or whether anyone who could tell the difference between an Easter Egg & a rugby ball got a contract? Although I suppose even that is a policy of sorts!

I think there was a policy it just didn’t make it past 1st contact and we defaulted to Aussies and anyone from Skolars who could stand up straight. More and more I think we don’t have a pot that is why we are where we are. The massive expense of the ground(s) is a red herring and ring fenced. What we have for team and front and back room staff is akin to L1 sides. Seen like that what’s happening makes some sense. Anyway another away spanking this time from Leigh and then the crunch matches Rams and Newcastle. Lose those and everything falls down.

Northerners came to Skolars, Oxford and Hemel part time. They generally lived and trained up north and commute for matches. Frankly that's a more realistic way of getting experienced players than expecting them to relocate for a nine or so month part time contract.

Many of us tried to explain to the club (or at least the club's simian rep on here) that this plan wouldn't work. We'd seen it before, in times when London hadn't yet become one of the world's most expensive cities to live in. Of course, no-one listened.

Hi,

I do not think any of Danny, Tom or Jermaine could have put out a Championship standard team this season.

The powers that be made it so that no contracts of either a full time or part time status could be offered until the season was over which alienated existing and new potential signings.

Offers were much less than the player was already on, and some offers were said to be under £200 a week.

It was thus possible for offers such as £15k with accommodation being sufficient to take players north.

I think the idea of signing players from the north and paying near nothing was absurd and ludicrous.

The minimum the club would need to do is offer accommodation, enough money to live on, and help getting work.

If they had to break the club by going part time, they should have signed about 6 first team standard players and made them also the manager, assistant manager, head of commercial, media manager etc.

They could have got some good older players then.

After a year or two they might get better jobs and vacate them for new signings.

Is Hughes running out of money or interest ? Is he seeking other investment or expertise to save the club ?

Thanks Mark. A devastating post which makes for awful reading. Quite how anyone thought moving to a SL standard stadium and paying players next to nothing would work is brain boggling.

Quite how those northern based players we were promised managed to resist such an offer will forever be a mystery, to the clueless people who promoted the theory, but not to anyone with any experience of southern RL.

Sadly a very Broncos thing to do.

My take on it

Hughes spat out his dummy around mid season last year when it was obvious that even if we made the playoffs, we would not be going up. In addition with the idiocity to hike the season tickets so much, which meant nobody would pay the prices to watch the tripe on offer, meant that not only was we not going up, but we had gates of circa 250 people.

So he blamed the team, decided he was not offering contracts, he was going part time. No wonder that the players fell off at the end of last season, what incentive was there to play a playoff match they would lose, when they all knew they would leave at the end of the season anyway.

I'm really not worried about next year, I think the whole franchise rests on the next 2 home matches. Lose to Dewsbury, and you will have <500 for the Newcastle game , and those 2 points happening will cause him to just stop.

Going to try and enjoy the dewsbury game I really fear it will be one of the last games played by the club

I think you may well be right Crash. Worth also saying that last years 250 gates included a sizeable proportion of friends and family. I’d say under 200 paying guests was the norm: failing to take any steps to address that really was a mistake and disconnected many from the club it seems. As to Dewsbury : with respect to them not a major draw but I really urge everyone to turn up because this is the season right there. As for the Newcastle Friday night game with no travelling fans I suspect sub 500- I’ll go straight from work but even then no walk in the park to get there.