I don't think so

'Our' team - the Bradford Bulls, lest we forget - played today. And won!

No pre-game thread, no game thread, no score updates, not even a single comment about it on this forum...

If I were Andrew Chalmers I'd be sitting up and really taking note. When a bunch of the keenest and most committed Bulls supporters, a lot with many, many years of active support, can't even be bothered to comment on a game, then it really does say a lot

Indeed. The club has a mountain to climb both on and off the field.

I really don't think he gives a fuc....

Which sadly for the club, is contagious and has spread like the plague amongst the fanbase.

I see various players, officials and fans celebrating today's win on social media like it's a huge deal. Whilst it is no doubt better than losing, I struggle to get all that excited about beating bloody Oldham narrowly and failing to score in the second half. Shows just how far our team and expectations have fallen that this is now considered success.

Get used to it. It will get worse. It would take David Copperfield to pull this rabbit out of the hat! Too little too late from the owners. I didn't last as long as many on here, I called it a draw 2 years ago. I only come on here occasionally somewhat out of habit. It can be depressing. Best of luck to those still sticking with it and hope it turns around eventually.
My heart just isn't in it anymore and I barely can be bothered watching Superleague any more and I have a subscription! How sad is that?

But definitely something very wrong.Full time..so called excellent coach..but still make so many schoolboy errors match after match.Couldn't care about players out through injury or other excuses, we should at least have given ourselves a chance by getting the basics right.If we blame youth and inexperience,I still feel that they are very much coachable in a full time environment.I know people will also say that it's been men v boys, well maybe we were lacking brawn, but surely we could have shown more courage and play to a plan..but again, no.I have no faith in the present setup of the Club and can't think that in a lower division, the present management will fair any better.

Not OUR team any more. Players that come in for a couple of weeks and then go, owners that live 12,000 miles away. I used to support a rugby team not some political pawn in a game that I don't know or understand or care about.

Well said Rugbyred it seems we have been played as pawns and I like you are becoming tired of being treated as an after thought in an RFL grand conspiracy, that leads who knows where.

Ditto to all the above.
Since we are relegated anyway, I rarely even listen to an away match on BCB now
The season is well and truly over - I cant remember a previous season when I didnt watch/listen to every single game right up till the last one.
This year has been such an anti-climax
The only consistent thing about our club is that we are the proverbial "lead weight" of the leagues - we just keep plummeting

Probably not. LE on Twitter were carping on about 2 major updates on the future of the club and my first reaction was 'Meh!'

On a positive (or possibly more cynical not) it's nice to see the darlings of the RFL aren't having it easy in their promotion march.

Front page said our 'Chairman was staying' then the article is all about Andrew Chalmers. Says it all about how anonymous our actual chairman is when the RL rags don't even know who is who.

I saw that too. Hopeless journalism.

The bigger question was "Was Chalmers future ever in doubt?" If so WTF? He's meant to be the owner. Was he considering walking away? I think that's a question for the forum.

It's worse than merely losing interest with Bradford. My interest in the whole game is negligible. I don't have a clue what teams are in superleagues top 8 apart from Castleford being top of it. I'm not even sure who is in the middle 8s. It's such a parochial, amateur game that I can't be faffed reading about it. Now I accept I'm going to be an extreme example of the sort of apathy that a surfeit of woe can bring about but it's not just this club losing people, it's the game.

I'm in a similar position, not watched a game of Super League now for over a year.

Was shocked to see that Chase was actually contracted to Widness when the drug test news broke. Definitely fallen out of love with RL

You're not alone Pumpy. I use to be an RL nut, constantly reading articles, stats crunching etc. Now i just can't be bothered. I watched the Leeds game on Thursday as there wasn't much else on (baring in mind, it was like a religion to watch Friday/Sat night SL for me) Leeds are second in the table, i dread to think what the Bulls, Leeds, Saints of the early noughties would have done to them. The sport is just a mess, from a bonkers structure to farcical junior development. Nigel Wood just seems to bury his head in the sand instead of confronting clubs when they decide to make scandalous decisions (Like getting rid of the U21s)

I only go on a Sunday for the social aspect, seeing a group of mates, have a few drinks then watch a game of RL. I hate the term "the sport is on life support", they will always be fans who go and watch it, but my god it's dire to watch at the moment. It's boring. Clubs are lazy in their marketing. In fact i think clubs have become lazy in all aspects. We've gone so far back since the mid 90s to early noughties.

Too many amateurs are running clubs. The people with the expertise are in other sports. Basic professionalism and attention to detail is absent.

It's ironic we're moving to a part time squad when the people running the club have been amateurs for 10 years now.

I genuinely think the game is in the last chance saloon, I noticed the other week Sky had more viewers for a Gaelic Football game than for a Super League game and the crowds at SL games aren't very telegenic with so few in the grounds, no wonder they're always at Cas!

A return to licensing and genuine minimum standards is desperately needed, doesn't have to be an exclusive club - if a team is ambitious and puts the minimum requirements in place consistently over the longer term it can be elected into the top tier a la NRL, NFL, NBA, NHL and a ton of other sports who cope without promotion and relegation and grow their sports perfectly well in a controlled manner, in conference systems which RL could emulate.

We must see a return to genuine pathways for young players including U21 and/or U23 teams, recruitment districts that respect geography, minimum funding levels and a cap that grows to retain and attract that young talent. Its all so self evident, surely the folks running the game and the clubs can grasp the self harm that's being done.

Those principals were all abandoned way too easily for gimmicks and the Super 8's - if the plank that instigated all of that turns up at Odsal as owner or part-owner god help us all....

Interest in the Bulls is at a seriously low ebb, and the new owners cant win at the fans forum either, even if they're positive we wont believe any of what they say until we see actual action. As fans I think we've finally reached our limit for hearing just hot air.

The game as a whole is struggling, and the sooner we return to a simpler format the better, but my worry is that its not the format at fault, just that not enough people like the on field product. Take a look at some of the attendances from the last two weeks;

Batley – Swinton =544
Bradford – Toulouse =2753
Dewsbury – Rochdale =629
Sheffield – Oldham =305
(Salford – Cas =2811)
(London – Fev =926)
Dewsbury – Toulouse =628
Oldham – Bradford =853
Rochdale – Batley =453
Swinton – Sheffield =434
(Halifax – Widnes =2291)

Wigan, Hull, Wire, Saints and Hull KR all managed decent crowds, but there are lots of clubs it seems where interest is really low, especially for these short notice scheduled games, even if the team is doing really well and pushing for success like fax and Salford. Our crowds could recover given some positivity and being seen to compete and looking to climb back up the league structure (frankly Im surprised ours was so high against Toulouse considering everything) but it will be a long slog. Attendance is a habit when its not about following a winning team (which we've not been for quite some years now) and we have lots of fans who are failing out of the habit or each person has slowly found their limit of suffering/taking a kicking from the game.

I'm not sure how some of these clubs survive on numbers like that, but there still a lot higher than some of the 150 type crowds some of our new friends in League 1 achieve. Depressing, but Im sure Nige and the RFL have it all in hand....

Only thing in his hand's a growler...

Speaking of amateurs, just seen an extract from Keighley's programme. Jeez no wonder the games on it's




There's an extract that says "Bulls are relegated, love the Cougars xx" I mean WTF! This is an official programme. Yes the low IQ twitter users love it, great banter man and all that. But imagine being head of a company thinking of investing and seeing that. You would walk away instantly as you would be thinking your sponsoring a fans banter page, not an official club.

It's not just Keighley. Rochdales twitter is clearly a fan behind it. Just unprofessional. Then you get ours with spelling mistake after spelling mistake. I mean the latest one wasn't even a typo. The headline was "Toovey APPLAUSES Bulls fans"

The stuff we use to see on banter pages, forums and just general ribbing between opposition fans, has now found it's way on to official programmes, twitter accounts etc. It's embarrassing.

saw 2 fans in bulls shirts at the shay :O

Typical Cougars small time chip on the shoulder type "bantz".

Usually the preserve of Fax fans ain't that right hooligan27?

If you've ever seen Keighley's "Head of Operations" on Twitter, it's not all that surprising. Professional certainly isn't the word.

Oh, RL isn't [ithat[/i bad really, just check the announcements from the president of the United States - can't even string a coherent sentence together, seems to get around half way through and then has to take break as his head is hurting.

Next RFL Chief Exec after Nigel?

So fire and fury coming our way for our next punishment... still be their pets though.