Agreed.

However, if you had bothered to read the paragraph that followed the quote, you would see that I was suggesting exactly the opposite of what you are suggesting may have been the case.

Careful FA commensense replies will get you hate mail or worse a personal visit from Asim!

I assume you have had neither then?

Your weird cryptic comment, which you haven't cared to expand upon, suggested no such thing. Not even in Greek.

..is not capable of meaning exactly the opposite of what it says. Not even to you.

TBH, I am beginning to like you. Which is a shame, cos I enjoy our regular banter.

Here's the thing, I'll clap the team off after a defeat if the team has run themselves ragged but didn't have enough in the tank to get the win. But tbh that has NOT be the situation this year. There seems to be very little effort on the part of the players during the games we've lost this year. In fact the general work rate of the team seems to have been steadly declining since Noble left.

Oh and as for the whole "The team is in the because of Noble" arguement, I don't buy that at all. McNamara has been in charge for 2 years now. The only players remaining from Noble's championship winning team of 2005 are Harris, Deacon, Vagana, Langley and I suppose you can count Lynch in that one too. So that's 12 players out of the 17 that have come in under McNamara. So poor performance can hardly be laid at Noble's feet.

As another person who attended the game I too cheered the lads off the pitch in recognition of the effort they all put in. After falling behind they all bust their nuts trying and nearly succeding in coming back to win. If they look to be giving their all they deserve our support regardless of the result.

No problem. I like my dogs, doesn't stop me whipping 'em

And to me that was the point, they did seem (however frustrating some of their decision making is) to be putting in 100% to my eyes anyway.

You may well have a point but have you stopped to think that the reason so many players are not up to the standard that were here before is because McNamara is working to different set of terms and conditions to his predecessor. The annual loss of half a million a year, the cuts in budgets to make up for that, the consistent breaching of the salary cap, which both Caisley and Noble were the chief culprits, the massive salaries and long term deals to to Harris, Newton,Vainikolo, etc, the total lack of investment in junior players have all had to be addressed and that would have been the same under any other Coach or Chairman. You may think McNamara is an idiot and a poor coach but do you honestly think the would prefer to sign James Evans than Matt King, or Ben Jeffries over Michael Monaghan. the answer is that the Bulls can't afford to 'buy' any anymore and have to pick up what is available and out of contract. The club is in a rebuilding stage and it will take some time to see the light at the end of the tunnel. Sacking the Coach is not the answer without a massive investment in players, which would have to include under the counter payments - which two notable clubs seem to be getting away with. But the Bulls don't have that sort of money and if they did they would fall foul of all the ususal idiots on here who castigated them the last time they breached the salary cap. Engage brain before mouth; or in most of your cases, before keyboard.

Seconded.......at last, some sense.

Yes but when is the Club going to officially say something like that?? They are not are they? but they could front up to the fans and explain some the points raised by TB(its o/k i've been innoculated) it won't change the results or even what may happen in the next few weeks but it would allow the fans a real sense of what the Club is trying to achieve albeit painfully at the momemt!

Completely agree.

Blimey, I need a lie down today.

I agree that the restraints are undermining somewhat our ability to bring in the best,but surely this brings a new set of rules to the table and therefore we need a coach who knows how to work within those parameters.This season,above all else, has shown that lesser experienced coaches involved with 'lesser' Clubs,having smaller budgets and enjoying less revenue from fewer crowds are more competitive then ever before.The right sort of stratigy,bringing in the players to suit and producing a successful blend of skill,application,determination,energy and fitness levels to improve performance,are,imo,key to attaining the chemistry and balance a squad needs to compete.Indeed,and rightly so,we have started to realise the importance of engineering and fostering,a youth academy attracting the 'cream of the crop', as a firm foundation for the future...an essential cornerstone of a Bulls revival.Whilst money may be a magnet for world class players,Clubs with a watertight system of developement will never be far behind,providing the structure is professionally assembled.

Think the biggest single thing macca has done for the club is his work re-building the youth team with paul medley. The 9 signings he made at beginning of year for under 18's will be seen as a major turning point for the club in a couple of years, with maybe a couple of these players being fasttracked and making 1st team debuts at end on next season. Large part of leeds current success has been due to large group of players that came through their youth setup together. Notice how leeds tied them all down on 5 year deals in their debut seasons on wages that no doubt impressed young lads were almost certainly quite small for the standard of player by the end of the 5 year deal. They've just repeated this with current batch of youngsters whilst having to give certain of there previous batch substantial increases to re-sign ( burrow,maguire,sinfield spring to mind). Its by having a good batch of youngsters on cheap long term deals plus a sprinkling of highly paid internationals that leeds are so successful at the moment. The previous admin/coach presided over the sale of our last batch of kids (pryce,reardon,parker,peacock,moore,bridge etc) when they came wanting better deals instead of putting them on long deals to start with.

Maybe you could start one of your polls?

I think most people know the Bulls can't afford to buy (though we did shell a lot out for Solomona) however there have been plenty of players who have joined other clubs on free transfers that would've improved the Bulls. Whatuira and Jake Webster spring to mind immediately. I don't think these two are at the clubs that you obliquely accuse of fiddling the cap.

While we might be constrained by the cap I find it hard to believe that the departures of Fielden, Peacock, Pryce, Paul, Hape and Vainikolo haven't freed up some space for some replacements of similar quality. Instead we've signed average performers who surely must be on less money.

The only explanation I can come to is that we're not spending the full cap anymore. Yet Hood tells us this isn't the case. So are we really spending £1.7m on the present squad? If so we really are paying some players well over the odds.

If we're not paying the full cap its time to come clean. It'd certainly explain a lot. If we are then I despair at the standard of recruitment. While the juniors undoubtedly needed investment the likes of the Donaldsons, Tates and Burgesses will take years to come through. By then we may be a lower table side and not able to hang onto them unless the current decline is stopped.

any money freed up by pryce and paul was used by noble to bring in his last batch of recruits, mckenna and bai spring to mind although there were a couple of others too.
Fielden was never on a massive wage which was one of reasons he left iirc, and any money freed up was used on solomona.

Vainikolo's wage was used to bring in tupou and remainder used to fund jeffries,godwin,nero,sykes,finnigan and tadulala - remember we only had hendo,harris,st hilaire and mcavoy leaving last year so 5 out including les and 7 in. cant imagine st hilaire and mcavoy were on big money whereas only one of last years signings i'd imagine was relatively cheap would be finnigan and maybe godwin.

Hape's wage hasnt been used yet and I'd expect this to be available for signings next year. Big thing this year was sorting out court case and i'd imagine hape transfer fee went towards this.

Appalling attempt.

Indeed.

They aren't here now though are they? When they were those two, and Stanley Gene and Marcus St. Hilaire were producing performances streets ahead of plenty of the crock of sh*te turning out this year.


Indeed, the much vaunted "difference" as we chased his signature, the man to give that spark to lead to trophies. Good move that, obviously it's not the current regimes responsibility in any way.


More great use of money there eh? Replace 5 with 7 and the performance goes downhill.


Would this be the same sort of transfer fee banked for Vainikolo? I know some people do get paid for bending over and letting someone do as they want.

If you can't accept that a lot of McNamara's recruitment has been p*ss-poor then there isn't much point discussing it. Apparently he has had the full cap at his disposal, so he's messed up badly with this "quantity" approach, if he hasn't had the full cap then the chairman has wilfully misled the support. I know you're amongst the "see no evil hear no evil" brigade when it comes to the club, but even you've got to admit that one of those scenarios is the truth, and whichever one it is, it is unacceptable.

There's spending to the salary cap and then there's spending [ito [/ithe salary cap.

maccas been spending to salary cap but 250k of that was tied up in harris plus at least 100k in hape who just wasnt interested this year. Solomona was brought in by macca and hasnt lived upto expectations agreed, but everyone was pretty pleased when we signed him.

Only one of this years signings who hasnt lived upto expectations is nero. godwin has been a bit quiet and sykes's defense has been poor but semi,jeffries finnigan have all been amongst our better signings. It's been some of our players from previous seasons who've had a quiet/poor season this year which has been a bigger problem ( and thats when they manage to get on pitch between injuries).

There's also wilfully misleading fans when the support base is low on confidence, not 100% convinced by those in charge of things and numbers are falling off worryingly, on the back of a distinct lack of entertainment.

I'd suggest that isn't a very good idea.

Yeah, and there's brutal honesty that might be misguided too. Some sort of middle ground has to be found and it is difficult to identify just what it is.

The club is in the schtum and the lack of 'rally round the club' sentiment on here is what I consider most worrying. Not much that can be done about that though.