A lot of chairmen bump into players at Birch Services. The number of "co-incidenta"l meetings and coffee chats in that place is staggering.

Richard you should have been a Lawyer.

I remember bumping in to Danny Tickle and John 'Norman' Pendlebury in what was Jenny Dees just before the young man headed off over the Pennines, doubt there was any coincidence in that though.
Though JP did look a bit sheepish when I walked in accompanied by a then referee.

Good times.

Purely out of interest, where would we train if full time?
Would Calderdale College let us have their pitch every day during term time?
Gym facilities. Don't think the ones we use are suitable for full time.
Keep your hats on, not pitching one way or the other just asking a couple of questions.

There's always somewhere, pal.

Bawtry Road has proved a fantastic training base for us. You don't need stands and chip vans.

your saying you don't need chip vans to wrong person here !!

Full time isn't just about having a permanent training pitch to run drills on. Its also about recovery time, less distractions i.e. stressful jobs, and can give more quality family or friends down time.

Much of full time is personal training and dietary benefits, players can do extra gym work, more personal develop stuff, and the coach can spend more time on analysis of tactics and performance with the group. Finding a gym, a classroom or a park to run round wont be an issue.

Richard himself has said they spend almost as much time together on the training paddock with the pads and drills as Full time teams. With a smart coach and a committed group, which we have, we can compensate, and Richard also stated the importance of what the guys do away from the club. which I also believe they have bought into and we see the benefit of every week on our hallowed 'new' turf and away from home.

I'm not 100% convinced Full time would have made us a top of the league side this year, or any significantly better, and the gap between Full time and part time is not as wide as some believe. Some players may even benefit from Rugby League not being the 'Be all and end all'

I'm also not convinced Sheffield and Featherstone are somehow gonna leapfrog us or blow us off the park next year, I still think we have the best Coach in the division and some cracking players who can get even better and tighter as a group.

In an ideal world Full Time would be marvellous, but it wont miraculously get us promoted though, or stop us getting promoted on the flip side if we don't, other factors might.

UTFAX
In Richard we Trust.

Good luck to The Sheffield Fan and The Pit Village though.

I hope you don't mind me saying so, but, Ann excellent post with salient points.



However calling Fev a Pit Village is like calling Sheffield a steel City.

Seems we could learn a lot commercially from the Eagles....

Just call it the pits. That'll do!

got a much larger catchment area obviously but i agree, they must treat their sponsors like royalty.

Its just their owner that puts the money in...

Until he gets fed up.

We've been there before.

D/r out of the window.
Teams now to run "second teams" or whatever we want to call them.
Richard and the board had already said this was the way to go.
Could we have afforded to do so if we had gone full time?
Just a thought from a negative, prepared to accept second best Faxfans.

we're 1 season in a multi season plan, keep the faith

A multi season plan that is open to the RFL's discretion.Was once a stipulation to gain a licence to SL,you required a reserve team. Now we see SL team coaches shouting for the same.

Not because of the gap between U19's and the full squad as they say,but so they can pull the readies from the feeder clubs again.