When the message that is coming out is "everythings fine, we're doing well financially and if it wasn't for refs and injuries we'd be doing much better on the pitch" what do you expect people to rally around?

Because, read all that's come from the club over the season and that's exactly the message that is given out.

From my experience honesty is always the best policy when you are communicating with your support, if you're not honest at the time you risk losing their support and sympathy, which then gets worse further down the line when the full picture does become clear, and people realise they had things hidden from them at the time.

That's hit the nail on the head.

Can't agree. If it was simple as that, there wouldn't be a the saying "Don't wash your dirty linen in public". Like I said, you've got to plot a course between the two extremes.

As to what there is to rally around, how about the Bradford club, an institution that has been in existence in one form or another for one hundred and forty-five years. There's no obligation but professing a great desire to see the Bulls do well and stating that you intend to withdraw your support if results do not improve sharpish seems a bit contradictory.

I agree while the club keep trotting out the same things it's impossible to have an sympathy with the way things are going.

Any?

Yes if things are bad I'd be rather kept in the dark than led to believe everything in the garden is rosy.

Do you fancy me or something? If so, you really need to send a PM because your pathetic obsession seems to be getting the better of you.

Obsession? You're an odd chap.. I'll give you that. But for the record you were the one who quoted me on page one. If you suffer from paranoia then a public forum probably isn't the best place for you.

For the benefit of the club Peter Hood shoud replace Macca with a Australian coach that is a proven NRL premiership winner.

As these grow on trees, and are free. Two for one at Lidl this weekend.

Oh - you missed that he should wait and see which team wins the NRL GF and then sign their entire squad, before doing the decent thing and resigning himself, with all his board.

Nope, youve got to pay for him.

Its like anything else, you pay for the quality.

If you settle for cheap options then you get what you pay for, exactly like we are seing on the field right now.

Iestyn Harris was a cheap option? Fook me, I hope we never get an expensive one, then.

You're just another in a long line of instant-success fools who probably actually believe that you can buy success, just get the cheque book out and buy everyone else's best players and staff.

I'm far from a instant success fool, McNamara has had long enough and his second rate coaching, recruitment and decisions are the reason we ar currently performing rubbish.

His players wont perform for him, he cant motivate them.

His recruitemnt policy is absolutley shambolic.

And his selection, tactics and substitions are amongst the worst I have ever seen


A coach who's players respond to his instructions is what is needed, not one who puts out to the media very week and likes to fnd somebody or something else to blame other tha accepting responciblity himself.

There has been absolutley no improvement during his reign, only backwards slump but if you are happy with that, then more fool you.

Sooner or later you will have to Face the music - he's a complete and utter dud and needs getting rid of before he runs us to into the bottom half of the league.

You might aswell do it now.

Peter Crud is just as much a spinless chatter as much as Steve McNamara aswell. - Chip off the old block and all that.

Ah, you have no answer. Point proved. And as I suspected you of course want to sack the chairman too.

Your adolescent plan, summarised:
[size=200"SACK EVERYONE !!!"
"THEN GO OUT AND BUY EVERYONE ELSE!!"
[/size

Maybe when you grow up you'll develop some connection with the real world.

I can't believe people on here, you've all been so used to success so now we have a blip and its all hang them!! Get a grip! Any money that has been 'spared' has gone onto getting new guys but also towards new deals of those players who have performed...ie Sam Burgess. Where do you think the money has come from to keep him at the Bulls? a tree??? What about increases the wages of the others that we are keeping? Can't expect them to carry on on peanuts do you?

I wonder what some of you would do if we had a squad like wire who have got the stars but can't even win anything! Wire fans still turn out and support them. Face it we will be waiting a while before we hit the high time again so just ride out the rough times.

Yes there may be probs of motivating some of the guys, how do you know Steve isn't motivating them? How do you know he's NOT doing what you all say he SHOULD be doing? i'm sure you'll say "because they aren't performing"....well some of the lads need a kick up the backside......unfortunately i didn't have my boots on sunday to even attempt to do that

He is doing his best so give the guy a break. It doesn't matter who the coach is. Another coach can come in say/do the same but it might not change anything. Its the overall mentality that has to change. Rule this season out and we'll see what happens in the next one when Menzies joins us. Tbh if that doesn't give some of them a kick up the backside nothing will!!

Edited for accuracy.

Ta

I did mean some rather than all obviously

But that's one of the main problems people are having with the recruitment under McNamara. We've seen players like Sing go to Hull or King go to Wire. Yet what do we get? Sykes. Platt. Feather. Hardly likely to set the world alight or stir up interest in the team are they?

Put simply you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. And trust me, the Bradford team of 2008 are one step away from being up in the trees flinging their crap at each other

You need to take a chance on people if you are going to get good value, cf Paul Anderson, Jimmy Lowes, Robbie Paul, Graeme Bradley, Tevita Vaikona, Lesley Vainikolo, Shontayne Hape, Bernard Dwyer, Andy Lynch, Ian Henderson... do I need to go on?

There's taking a chance and ignoring the fact that the majority of our recruitment in recent years has been players who've spent most of their SL career battling relegation.

This takes me back. I was still playing when a similar situation arose in the season after we won the Yorkshire Cup. After the glory of the success thanks to my last minute try our fans became expectant of triumph and I suppose we'd flattered to decieve with that glorious Cup win. Even Eddie Waring jumped on the "Scrap the Yorkshire Cup after this dross" bandwagon remarking that even his own grandmother could have fallen over the line unmarked and that was saying summat because she was dead.

Anyway after a terrible 10 try drubbin infront of our own fans by Rochdale the chairman finally relented and sacked the coach. The coach's day job was as the Chairman's second in command at his abbatoir (where I also worked as a cleaner) which was weird. The Chariman then took the controls and a downward spiral of defeats began. The pressure to perform was relentless and the chairman was driven into going out on late night benders to cope with the pressure. One evening he ended up in an illegal late night gambling den in Tong and was pushed into waging the club against a local businessman's Jag over a hand of poker. Suffice to say he lost and the ruptions from this and the uneasy transition between owners hit the players motivation hard and the team further underacheived.

The new owners brought a new coach in who sacked most of the team and brought his own men in. I survived the chop due to my obvious abilities wel that and I agreed to a 50% cut in pay and the owner was a fellow freemason.

The stress throughout this period of uncertainty made my demons and urges more harder to control and my addictions began to effect my marraige. My wife (now ex. wife the bitch) had gone round all the local shops telling them not to serve me macaroons anymore but my addiction had got so bad that I would go to extraordinary lengths to get my paws on a box of them and a bottle of Cherry brandy. I would travel by bus as far a field as Hebden Bridge, Penistone, Emley and Otley. It all came to a head when on one of these trips to satisfy my vices I ended up on a train from Beverley to Leeds from which I was asked to leave after trying to start a fist fight with a fellow passengers west highland terrior I honestly thought it was Geoff Maclimont who used to bully me at school. I was so out of it on macaroons that I had started to hallucinate.

When the lady took the dog away and ran into another carraige I thought I was back in Mr Wilkinsons office about to get the cane for fighting again whilst Geoff Maclimont the instigator had been allowed off scot free again. I began to cry uncontrollably thumping the ground and stamping my feet. At this point the conductor had called ahead for assistance so as a police officer, conductor and station master manhandled me off the train at Leeds I wet my self mistaking them to be prefects.

As I sat in the police cell as the macaroons and cherry brandy wore off I can clearly remember thinking to myself what the hell has happened to me. I resolved sat in that police cell - naked but for the paper underpants I'd been handed by the police - to finally curb my macaroon and Cherry brandy addiction.


I think it lasted about 6 months before my playing career ended and I fell off the wagon after facing up to the realisation that I was no longer to be a household name and sporting superstar around Cleckheaton!

Steady on! Not everyone's calling for blood. I just can't get my head around how the 08 team is on the same sort of cash as the 05 team, given the obvious difference in quality. Obviously Burgess was a priority re-signing but we've managed these in the past without it affecting the quality of the recruitment in the rest of the squad. I remember a big deal being made of Fielden signing a new deal with us after he'd made exactly the sort of breakthrough as Sam. We also went onto sign players like Hape and Vainikolo at the same time so what's going on now?



We can't win anything either at the moment remember, Wire seem to be higher than us in the table. If anything the two clubs seem to be heading in opposite directions. Whilst I live in hope that our investment in the academy will bear fruit I really worry that by the time those kids come through we'll be back playing in front of crowds of 4000 because standards have been allowed to slip so much with the first team. Then salary cap rules would mean we can't hold onto these great prospects we've been nurturing. We've got to get the balance right between planning for the future and the present. If you allow the first team quality to slip too much then you jeopardize the future.



Signing one 35 year old (albeit excellent) player isn't going to turn around the fortunes of this squad. More quality is needed especially in the backs. I'm sure McNamara is doing his best but I fear that the quality of player he has to work with is in many cases not good enough to respond. It's not the mentality of some players that needs to change but the players themselves. If people reckon that Menzies can have such an effect on the squad on his own then they're really putting their eggs in one heck of a shaky basket.

Fact is McNamara as coach is ultimately going to carry the can for performances, whether you like it or not. He recruited six players in the off season of rather variable quality so to complain about the mentality of the squad is a bit rich, he's recruited many of them!

It's been an injury ravaged season and McNamara has had a lot to cope with. We've been here in the past in 98. I just hope our response to 08 is the same as it was in 98. After 1998 we signed Henry Paul, Michael Withers, Scott Naylor and David Boyle as well as Nick Zisti (one dud amongst 5 good players). We need a similar response in this close season.

I believe someone like John Kear as an expert man manager has the ability to wring out every drop of talent from an otherwise average squad.

Our squad, although no longer of sufficient quality to match the best IS good enough on paper do achieve substantially better results than it has done thus far. For that reason, I'm sorry to say I fell of the fence at the stoop [size=59(not because of meths this time)[/size. I don't see Macnamara as the man for the job anymore.

Excellent points all round. The incomings to the club this year are vitally important and so far the only rumours are the likes of Nick Scruton and Jamie Rooney, who are not exactly gonna "get the juices flowing" should they actually come on board.

As far as I am concerned, if the quality of signing this off season is as uninspiring as last years one then it makes me feel that, regardless of results, McNamara has been told that he is here for the long haul. After all, if he needs performances to ensure he keeps his job, then we need some names coming in to the club IF POSSIBLE.

Also, if it IS the case that we......

a. have no money
b. cannot attract any quality players
c. are trying to get certain players in but cannot for any reason
d. are in a serious transitional phase and will be unlikely to be in the mix for any trophies for a while

etc.

then why can't the club come out and say this rather than putting positive spin on everything? Fans are more likely to stick by a team if they are aware of what is going on at the said club. I do not expect us to be winning trophies every season, but I also think that it is fair to point out that there was a lot of confidence being spouted at the start of the season by the club, yet, as it is all going horribly wrong, it now seems that we are in a transitional period and will not be competing for a couple of seasons.

What is it to be?

Were fans misled at the start of the season so that they would buy a season ticket?

There is too much uncertainty at the club at the moment and it is not being helped by the performance on the pitch, whatever the reason. It is also time that people within the club started taking some responsibility for what is actually going on at the club.

The council etc are apparantly to blame for the lack of the OSV, the refs are to blame for the losses on the park, Brian Noble is to blame for the lack of funds available and "deserting a sinking ship", Iestyn is to blame for taking up all the cap and more, Chris Caisley is to blame for "trying to get one over on Leeds", Mr Morrison is to blame for not putting his hard earned cash into the club, yet no-one seems to be accountable for the current problems on the field.

It is all well and good having a pop at the fans, but the board and management are hardly covering themselves in glory at the moment. SOME of the fans are indeed moaning at the goings on at the club, but we are no different than the club moaning about everybody being against them at the moment.

If you take the praise and adulation when you are winning, then, by definition, you should take the criticism when things are going wrong.

Excellent points through out.