One read of this forum and I’d say hardly any fans are ‘counting their chickens’. If anything there’s plenty of acknowledgement it will be a tough league this season.

We do need to display some confidence though. Confidence with caution is how we should be.

The first few games we need to put a marker down and show that we mean business.

Nobody can argue that, it’s been the pattern for most of the last fifty years.

One of the Ellis/Powell regimes most important aims has to be to dispel that culture.

I too am sick to death of Trinity sides coming out like rabbits caught in the headlights in these sort of games. Twenty minutes in and the game is lost, but with a tiny little burst at the end just to show what could have been. Frustration city, we’ve all been there.

With all the fireworks and the hype and a full house this has all the potential for a massive flop. At the end of the day Bradford have nothing to lose and that’s hard to fight.

But it’s a brave new era, and we owe it to the club to trust them with our confidence.

One thing most of us will agree is that despite the cheap tickets and the new stand, a good win against Bradford and the rest will be the thing that really gets the Wakefield public interested. Do that and it creates its own momentum.

If nothing else, it is at least exciting. Something we haven’t really seen for five years, or maybe not since 2004..

This week's Reader's Poll in League Express is...
"Which of last year's play-off teams will pose the biggest threat to Wakefield Trinity's likely dominance of the Championship ?"
Bradford
Fev
Sheffield
Toulouse
York.

So they've obviously got us down as favourites !!

Any bookies odds yet for the championship?

I think you'd have request a bet for that. No ones really going to be doing odds on Championship online. Local bookies might.

quite a few usually have match betting available online and Sky I'm sure last year had championship winner odds and top try scorer

Challenge cup odds are out and we are quoted 50/1 which is quite complimentary considering.
We are also the highest ranked championship team with Fev next at 100/1.

If betting for championship comes out this suggest we will be clear favourites by short odds.

I don’t think you quite get the advantage staying full time gets you. The last 5 competitive years in the Championship, the full time team finishes 1st. 100%. If there are two full time teams, they finish 1st and 2nd. 100%. Playoffs are a different matter (see last season…) but basically you’re in a head to head with Toulouse over 1st & 2nd place. All the part time teams will take points off each other fighting for third.

Quite right, as they say “it’s not how you start it’s how you finish”, after watching trinity for 70 years I never take them for granted, I’m optimistic we’ll be a top 5 club in the championship, but even then promotion doesn’t happen on the field, the battle for promotion points takes place off field.

I do. But I think we have a further advantage, or at least we do if our new owner is as good as his word. We have the ability to strengthen the team in the last third of the season, the business end as they say, and it's a lot easier to get quality players to join a full time squad than a part time one.

If we fail it's our own fault, all the balls are in our court.

That’s the Leigh way. They started the season with a top quality Championship side and finished the season with a mid table SL quality side. And a lot of spare players that they loaned out

Quite right. You can put a list a mile long of why we could win any game/cup/league BUT the single item in the negative list is that this is Wakefield we are talking about, the modern day perennial big stage bottlers.
The preparation and continued improvement of the off field fabric of the club will be our salvation.

I'd narrow that to top three, I'd be a bit disappointed at lower than that. Not in terms of play offs placings or IMG, but for the general momentum at the club, and the feel good factor. Without that, I don't think SL via the IMG route alone will be enough to get people to buy into the SL dream as much as we'd like, or at least not at the start. Basically it would suit the doomoungers, who will say that we are not there by right, and we could do without that.

Finishing top and winning the play offs may not be vital to us getting a SL place. But for the players, the club and especially the fans ,it would be the far superior outcome.

You are right, the battle for promotion is off the field mostly, but the points for the Grand Final win are pretty important. We could really do with those.

And would help with the promotion of the team in terms of support the year after too.