I bet it was written by Paul (we shall fight them on the beachs)Medley!

Nah, it's not St Crispin's day Dennis!

Whitehead posted something very similar about being inspired too

We had huge expectations about Macnamara which just increased the sense of disappointment, and probably put too much pressure on him.

Aye. Let's not get ahead of ourselves!

You could see right through Macca though, all he did was talk a good game. I think Cummins has a bit more.

I assume we will be hearing from our new head coach tonight at the forum. Looking forward to hearing what he has to say about the future and his expectations for next season.

^
This

Can't wait for tonight. Very much looking forward to hearing what Omar and Francis have to say

Based on what?

A feeling I have.

I doubt it, just remember Macca got on as Head Coach just when the Bulls were already going down the slippery slope and didn't have the experience to apply the brakes(if there were any) when the money tree had all but withered and the better players were going and no youth back up.
Franny has to climb back up an equally slippery slope but will be better equipped to do it!
Despite the Financial handicap I hope Omar's enthusiam doesn't overstretch his wallet!

Its virtually impossible for a fan to gauge how well an assistant coach will perform when promoted to head coach. Players and their previous boss will inevitably say nice things about them. Which is fairly meaningless. Best keep an open mind and be patient with them.

Trust me, I can gauge.

I'd base it on about 5 years more coaching experience than MacNamara and working under multiple different head coaches.

Yeah, I think that's fair comment. I do think the individual situation into which a new coach is let loose can make a difference though, and I'd say that ours isn't the ideal one but, given the circumstances surrounding the club, he hopefully won't be damned by the sort of high expectations which Macca suffered from, even though there are a few similarities.

I think Mcnamara created a lot of the expectations himself. I remember him saying that he had a squad good enough to reach the Grand Final at the start of the 2009 season.

Yeah, my recollection from the time was that a top four finish was mooted. To be honest though, "faint heart never won fair lady", (as the saying goes), so having high expectations is only to be expected - even if they are sometimes only internal expectations and not put into the press, and ateotd no club is going to say we expect a poor to middling season just as they are trying to sell season tickets. In truth [ithis[/i season, with everything surrounding it, is probably the only one where we might have got away with it!

Going back to 2009, wasn't that the year where we lost the last pre-season game due to the weather and then the first game due to a re-arrangement involving our supposed opponents? That put us on the back foot right from the start and then the injuries kicked in and crippled us for most of the season - all in all it was a shocker all round.

I'm guessing [url=http://www.thetelegraphandargus.co.uk/sport/sportbulls/9950758.Keep_fit_or_pay_the_penalty__Cummins_tells_Bradford_Bulls_players/this[/url was the meeting that inspired Bateman and Whitehead.

You've got me there. I can't remember now and it seems such a long time ago with all that's happened since. I remember it being Menzies first season.

Broncos away, 1st league game Beaver due to play called off for frost on the saturday, day before game

Yeah, it was that season. I suppose it's easy to overstate the influence it had, but with losing our major pre-season game the week before and then missing the first league game, it left us well under-done compared to everyone else when we actually got on the field in week 2 of the season, a game we inevitably lost. Ah well, seems like a different lifetime now..

Didn't we draw our first game of 2009. IIRC it was at home against Hull KR we then lost to Huddersfield in our next home game.

You may be right Gareth, HKR certainly rings a bell, memory isn't what it was..

, I know it was was a game (as were soooo many back then) many many people were so full sure we should have won by a bucketful that the result put everyone into a downer. Sort of set the tone for the season, you might say.

Your on the right lines on that. Our last pre-season game was postponed not for the weather it was because the RFL agreed to Manly having a warm up game against Harlequins prior to playing Leeds in the WCC. So our round 2 game against Quins was brought forward to the weekend before the start of the season which was then frozen off. We then played Hull KR in round one drew 13 all we had no game in round two then played Huddersfield in round three.

Sounds a bit better than my version..