No contest i will be staying, i know it may seem deftest but i can't see us staying up and am looking forward to next year when we can play some different teams and see some wins. The Cougars / Bulls came is a must.

Thoroughly looking forward to the trip to fax. Marketed right, could see a crowd of 5k

I'll still be around and will still buy my season ticket regardless of where we play.Bradford have been my team for as long as I can remember, my family have been going since the 50's and it was pretty inevitable i'd follow suit. My Grandma died 2yrs back and she would turn in her grave if I gave up now just cos we've got to take a step down for a bit.

Like many, i'm looking forward to getting this year out of the way and starting afresh next year, although I still dream of a miracle intervention (however unlikely).

When I started really going to games and understanding what was going on, I was about 8yrs old (1989/90 season) and I went with my grandparents to all away games. In hindsight, some of the smaller grounds were the best, although many have changed (Watersheddings, Thrum Hall, Post Office Road to name a few).

So, sign me up to wherever. How does the song go???

"I'm Bradford Till I Die, I'm Bradford Till I Die, I know I am, I'm sure I am... I'M BRADFORD TILL I DIE!!!"

In an odd way I am looking forward to next year. The Winter should allow my 'Bulls fatigue' to dissipate and with an off season without the drama we have all experienced over the past several years it will feel good to focus on matters on the paddock.

For myriad reasons I am hopeful of attending more games in 2015 if my schedule allows. The derbies should be fun and the novelty may be similar to that of Rangers playing in the lower leagues of Scottish football. I don't think the Bulls are going to necessarily sweep all before them as Rangers have done these past couple of seasons, but there is a common thread of the fallen giant starting over.

I have a sense that Super League may miss the Bulls more than the other way around.

Couple of questions I have about next year.

1. Presumably this year will be the last for dual registration?

2. Will the competition points system in the Championship fall in line with Superleague next year? ie. 2 for a win, 1 for a draw and no bonus points.

Pretty much my feeling

I haven't decided yet about a season ticket, and voted in the poll for that option. A lot depends on what kinds of deals they strike. We will also need to know whether the season ticket is for just the 'regular' season, or whether it includes the breakaway 8 games as well.

To be honest, I'll be relieved when this season is over. With a few months off, I suspect I'll be looking forward to trips to The Shay and Cougar Park.

Looking at the champ table, it's not certain we'll actually be playing Keighley next season. It's squeaky bum time right now as far as they are concerned.

There'd be a certain irony in that

They've been waiting for nearly 20 years for us to fall from grace and they might fall further down still

Two thing I'll be doing differently;

1. Not rushing out to buy my season ticket ASAP, I'll wait until news - any news - drips out and get it in the last week of Early Bird.

2. Buy it on credit card!

So somewhere around 80% don't think they will be packing it in. I find that very encouraging, and so should the Bulls. If I was expecting anything then it'd probably have been maybe 50-50 so this is great stuff.

Yes - but you are sampling a section of Bulls fans who also spend their time on RAB - so pretty hard core supporters. If you take the current gates of around 5000 then if 80% turn up next season it would give the club the 4000 they are looking for. However the vast majority don't come onto RAB - so for the balance I would suspect they will want to see more evidence we can get a competitive squad assembled for next seasons campaign. Fans will just about be resigned to life in the 2nd tier - but probably ease their pain by assuming we will quickly head up the pack next season - but a few early defeats next year and maintaining the gates will get a whole lot harder.

Not sure I'd agree that all RAB members are "hard core" supporters - I have the feeling we have a pretty representative cross-section of the 5000. But just my feeling. If we do have a successful enough start to the year I don't see any reason why we can't get 4K. I do think optimism will be fragile, though, and if we start next year appallingly, as if we've learned nothing, then crowds would be in big trouble. Nobody is going to turn up to many more no-shows or disinterested drubbings.

Another article today urging us to tell all our friends and family to come on down to the fabulous wonderdome. It doesn't take a psychologist to know that issuing the same tired old crap about how the fans simply MUST play their part is starting to wear decidedly thin.

The club has announced buggerall about our 2015 squad so frankly, until they do, they can shut the effup telling us what we should and shouldn't do in supporting them.

Quite. I've read the thing 3 times now and he doesn't actually say anything, it's just all ifs and buts. I mean, ""I think we'll see a different sort of mentality from the board towards the fans," wtf?

I am completely unaware of what mentality (if any) has been shown to me as a fan from the board. What was it? Is it bad? Why is the change (whatever it is) necessary?

The T&A also published an interview with Solly the other day. If and when we get to the point where we have to compete with and beat SL teams in 2015 then we will have to do so with a squad based on a £1million salary cap whereas our SL competitors will have players up to a £1.6m cap.

Next year we will got £0.75m distribution whereas our SL competitors will get £1.6m.

Yep, we will start off before a ball is kicked on £850,000 less than our SL competitors. That is before you factor in the inevitably drastically worsened relative positions in terms of season ticket sales and gate money.

It is all very well Solly claiming to the T&A (as if this were somehow a positive) that that distribution is more than we've been receiving this year and last - we know, Solly. And look where it has left us.

The article in the T&A states that the club are still thinking about going to the high court. Yet the Bulls website from nearly a month ago states clearly that the club ARE going to the high court. Seems the more things change the more they stay the same and the lies from the board room keep coming

Whereas League Express reported (although I didn't read that section myself) that we'd be dropping it, I'm surprised that hasn't made the T&A yet.

The League Express thing basically said “a source at the club” had said they weren’t going to take it any further because we have no chance of catching Salford (which anyone reading this board could have told you two months ago) – which if true begs the question why bother saying you are going to launch action in the first place. Mind you the LE also said a couple of weeks back that the Bulls wanted to be in court within a week, so who knows. Maybe they need to have a word with their source.

Have to say it does wind me up the constant waffling on about the fans need to do their bit – yeah we will if you do yours and not keep saying “we can’t do it ourselves” and make it look like you might not quite know what you are doing.

Don’t think the constant chat about “bring friends who used to be here when we were league champions” helps – a more apt comparison (although one the club should look at in private rather than parrot in the press) is that it was only a few years ago we had 10,000+ season ticket holders. Now I’m not a moron, that’ll never happen again, but it shows there is a willingness to support the club from about 5-6000 lapsed fans – and let’s not forget we were watching some rubbish rugby at that time and probably some of the worst we’ve seen at Odsal in SL outside of this year. Maybe the following administrations have permanently eroded any goodwill, but I don’t think issuing a rallying call for existing fans to get more people through the door is going to have any positive effect. If anything it almost makes me want to not go out of spite (although that would clearly be stupid).

Absolutely right. Not a single fan ever paid through a turnstile as a result of being publicly admonished by a chairman or club officer, and I'm astonished that they still come up with this stuff. It's the 21st century ffs. The notion of significant numbers of lapsed fans paying back in through a sense of obligation awoken by a jolly good ticking off and pep talk is faintly dotty.

Now if Ferres or whoever is in charge of marketing came up with (for example) some sort of attraction for any given one-off game, if they fired people's imagination then we might be able (and willing) to get one or two people to come along for the laugh.

Ferres said that I .. ie me ... and that YOU "NEED TO" get more people to come.


No, Steve Y_O_U need to do that. The people I know who used to come but no longer do will never come back unless and until THEY see that there is something THEY want to attend. I think it is both pointless and insulting to tell me that I "need to" get these people to come back, as if it's MY fault therefore if they don't. I have many times seriously considered joining them. So don't be having a go at me.

Caisley gave us a stern talking to a decade or more ago. It's good that the tried and tested tactic is still being employed. Crowds of £20k await.

It's a question of trust.

We've had Peter Hood's Comedy Ali style of lying about how everything is fine.
Then Omar and his merry men with their questionable business acumen.
But always we've had lie upon lie and the fans have had enough and Ferres and Green need to understand that.

Now, the BOD might be doing stirling work behind closed doors, but the fans haven't seen it. There's this master plan of Green that Ferres keeps alluding to but no one seems to know what it is.

And so it comes back to trust and the honest answer is the fans do not trust the board.

Top post, pretty much spot on.

I do wonder what he thinks the conversation will go like if I went down a pub in Bradford tomorrow

Me: “Hey mate, remember when you used to go the Bulls? Why not give it another try?”
Mate: “Hmm, for some reason I haven’t followed the club one bit since my last match 10 years ago. To be honest I was a bit sick of paying out for finals every few months”
Me: “Well you won’t have that problem any more”
Mate: “Not doing so well are they?”
Me: “No, it’s probably the worst Bradford team in my lifetime”
Mate: “Wow, that does sound appealing. Who is playing for them now?”
Me: “No idea, the club haven’t announced anything about who is playing next year”
Mate: “This is all great stuff, a marketers dream. Now before I run down to Odsal with my credit card, do they still have that “Where’s the warcry” bozo who used to ruin all the matches?”
Me: “No, there is an even bigger bozo now”
Mate: “Well, I’m convinced”

Not sure though how far "trust" in the board is a factor. Thinking about it, in our heyday, I can't say I especially "trusted the board", I didn't really factor the board much into anything. Speaking personally, trust in the board isn't a factor. If I want to go support the team then I'll go. It's a bit like the "government", if you'll forgive the loose use of that term. They are about as unprincipled, untrustworthy a bunch of lying crooks as I could probably imagine but I can't change them so just get on with stuff regardless of them.

When he used to shout "Let's hear the war cry" a few of us used to simply shout back "the war cry"

Anyway, to help get your "friends and family, who were watching the Bulls in their heyday, to come back and enjoy what is going to be a change in experience at the club", here's your free cut-out-and-keep marketing brochure.