I'm sticking to the view that I've held since the Wigan match. MacNamara should be judged in July. If at that stage he hasnt done enough to justify the Board's confidence in him, he should be replaced before the 2010 recruitment "season" gets underway.

I am glad that the thread i started has stimulated some genuine, sensible discussion. I will add a little more:

The recruitment season has started. Soliola, Fa'alogo, Fitzgibbon etc...

McNamara being sacked could not be a knee jerk. We have been on a slide for over 2 years. No other Superleague club would show such patience. there would still, even in our poor state, be a long list of experienced coaches beating down Hood's door to get a shot at the job.

Every budget in the club is being sacrificed to stimulate youth development. this has been neglected for years, but may take years to sort out. Balance is needed. The best, most Talented youngsters will not join a club that is in decline like ours, over a club like Leeds/Saints/ Wigan that are seen as big clubs, even when, like Wigan, they dont back this up with trophies.
The first team is what the fans pay to see, so neglecting this area is foolish.

if Kooga are struggling to satisfy demand, make it public and get people like me off the club's case.

What does Duffy do these days apart from pretending to be Langley and mORRISON? I remember when a thread like this on the OMB would be folloowed by a PM from Stuart and a conversation about why issues were not as they seemed. this personal approach kept people on board much more!

Indeed.

I would like to think the Bulls are well underway for 2010 squad additions, in fact I think it's been stated elsewhere we are.


I take your point, but I still don't feel sacking Macca is the answer. I think he has been a victim of circumstance (and cost cutting) in many departments.


Would there? I'm not so sure



I would say that youth development is key. And we ARE sprending the FULL cap*

[size=75*if what the Hood is telling us is correct.[/size

And as for players not wanting to come to the Bulls, well Leeds managed perfectly well, despite finishing near the wooden spoon in the first couple of SL seasons.


Fair point.



Again fair point, the club do need to get a little slicker in their dealings with the fans.

I sent an email enquiry over a week ago to the info@ address. I have yet to receive any sort of response.

The problem is that we haven't set down the criteria for judging him. Some people will say that it should be league position. Others will say that victories over Saints and Leeds prove he can do it and he should be given more time.

I emailed them a while back and Stuart replied the next day, so I'm not sure that is always true.

I've since had a response!! Hurrah!!

Personally I would judge him on our performances, excluding the more extreme fluctuations. ie ignore the two best and two worst performances. All teams can occasionally raise their game to heights that they cannot sustain, all teams have occasional stinkers. Look at what is the norm.

Applying that standard (and I don't think it's a bad one) to this season, the norm is very close matches that go our way around one time in three.

But we haven't had any big wins have we, just narrow wins, narror losses and some BIG losses.

I know you like to paint a positive view but I'd be surprised if we don't get any more big wallopings especially once the pitches start to dry out.

A dry track suits us better.

I dont buy this we can't play in the wet nonsense. If the players are up for it and there is a good plan we could play on the moon and win

The "dry track suits us better" line seems to be something spouted by most clubs nowadays, whether it is true or not I can't see it making that much difference, it isn't as if the team is blessed with pace and has been bogged down for the last few months.

No doubt those who truly believe in that will be in the "it's too hot" brigade come July and August if results still aren't there.

I'm not saying we shouldn't have won games we haven't, I just think we play better on dryer grounds

So that makes it OK. So going on your logic it's another four wins then this season.

I don't think af was saying it was OK, just that is the pattern so far. That's how I read it anyway.

I know, but it seems every club has fans who say that nowadays so, if it is true, it will just balance out.

What needs to happen next?

We need to win our next game?

So what happend to all the entrtainment before game and halftime?

The bulls paved the way in this area for all other clubs.

Well I enjoyed the male voice choir and the tag rugby at half time. It's the entertainment during the 80 that is often lacking at home this season.

It used to be day out at your place tho pal

That's a good point and the simple answer is - it's just about gone!

No real parade, pretty dire "bands". not as much for the kids in the way of bouncy castles, no fireworks, fewer food stalls, less merchandise to buy etc..

Some of this will be due to a drop in available funds which I accept. But some of it I just don't understand. We seem to have forgotten what Odsal was like with a lot going on prior to the match.

Interestingly - in the cold wet of Sunday we had a male voice choir rarther than the usual and it was shocking - after each song there was proper applause around the ground! Usually it's the sound of one hand clapping where I'm stood but not for the choir.

Yup. I'm not interested in any sort of positive spin here, rather trying to work out what's going on. Winning one in three games is not OK, but it is to my mind noteworthy that the majority of our games have been so close. Not that it makes things OK, rather that it indicates a different sort of problem to if we had a more widespread range of results. But what that problem is...?

I was also trying to look at the stats to work out a pattern, but its only bad news really. I worked out the stats below for our games win ratio per season for superleague matches. Whilst there are many many reasons, some structural, some luck, some of our own making and some imposed from the outside the stats do tend to confirm that our decline in performance has not been overnight (as we pretty much know), its been a steady decline in our competiveness, and I would suggest that any upturn might also involve an equally long time. It does show though that the decline in our dominance (mainly due to the increased performance levels of an increasing number of other clubs) was underway under Noble, and has continued under McNamara;

Year......win ratio (regular season).....ave att

2001......79%.................12315
2002......82%.................11525
2003......79%.................14836
2004......71%.................13500
2005......64%.................13367
2006......57%.................11263
2007......63%.................12084
2008......52%.................10287
2009......33%.................10742

Couple of interesting points, after winning the grand final in 2001, 2003, 2005 the following season each time brought a decrease in attendance (success on the pitch not everything? or fans getting complacent about success?). Only once since 2002 have we had more wins in a season than the previous season.

Just a few facts for people to make of what they will, but I'd just like to point out that a slow decline like that is unlikely to have any quick fix and that given the fall from grace still having 10,000 plus average is not too bad, evenif the last two home gates have been a cause for concern. but I'd also point out that no matter the circumstance, slow or quick decline, a win ratio of 33% is not acceptable - but then everyone including the club, fans and staff already know this.

I have a bit of a theory that as the number of anti-fans increases, collisions between them and fans are statistically bound to become more frequent, and thus there is an attrition rate as fans become annihilated.

Least, that's what my great uncle Albert said.

It has long been proved (there is some research that I once found somewhere on the net) that there is no link between being a champion team and increasing crowds. Weird, but true.

OTOH there is definitely a link between a successful, entertaining team and an increase baseline of crowds, so that on Sunday we got 7K whereas pre-Bulls it might have been 2K.

Nobody really knows (now the late, great Peter Deakin is no longer with us) what the secret is, and the issue of getting people through the gate is extremely complicated. Just "winning" helps but is by no means "the answer". Having said which, I still believe that the disenchanted Bulls fans are still out there aching to be attracted back, and if for example we began next season by signing a Lockyer and winning our first 5 games, I reckon we'd quickly be back up to recent averages.

Trouble is, I can't see anything like that on the immediate horizon, though you never know, which leaves us having to string a lot of good performances together, which at the mo we seem incapable of doing, which means short term disenchanted stayaways staying away.

Not to make excuses but the salary cap has started to make the comp more competitive and our decreasing stat is balanced by other teams improving theirs, e.g. Hudds.

Didn't we all long for an even SL where you couldn't predict any result week to week?
Would we all prefer a return to the 96-16 type thumpings we saw 9 years ago?
Frustrating though our form is, bigger picture it is an exciting competition.