I have no axe to grind here - but my view is that you can trace the start of your downfall with the return to Odsal. I know you won the GF in 2005 but that was on the back of saints being decimated with injury and Bradford "bringing" in Adrian Morely...

But consider the club has spent so much money trying to bring Odsal upto scratch and maintain the standards that the books have to balance somewhere and unfortunately for you its with player strength.

You had a perfectly good solution by ground sharing that would have helped both the sporting teams in Bradford - you were able to create more of an atmosphere and as a visiting supporters we were getting used to the ground!!!

Whilst Mcnamara is not the greatest coach he's not got the greatest squad to work with either - I just think the price you have paid to go back is too high.

Discuss??

Not much to discuss, it's common knowledge that Odsal is a gigantic drain on resources but it hasn't been the only one, eg the Harrisgate. But ATEOTD fans were voting with their feet and just didn't want VP, which was hardly cheap anyway, they were charging us an arm and a leg to rent time there.

A little simplistic to be honest. According to the chairman we`re spending up to the cap, or at least we`ve budgeted to spend the full cap. We made an offer to Fui Fui Moi Moi but he didn`t come (surprise surprise) and now Tame Tupou is off the list but those are the only reasons we`re under.

The relative lack of quality in the squad is down to other reasons; more clubs able to pay the full cap and more clubs in SL, both of which, given no actual increase in available players, mean players become a more valuable commodity. We haven`t (oh please be true) gone down the route of offshore payments (maybe the financial problems when leaving VP are the reason: discuss) so we have been disadvantaged in terms of the quality of player available to us.

The simple fact is that the VP deal is off the agenda. At the moment it seems that even Bradford City feel the cost of playing there is too high, in fact the current chairman there has floated the idea of moving to Odsal SV when built. Sorry IF built.

We did great in 2003 and 2004 too, don't take that away from us

The Morley factor was not that significant, whatever others chose to believe. What was much more significant was that the players, bit after mid-season, had a good talk to each other and decided to knuckle down, put all the disruption behind the scenes behind them, and go for it. Interestingly, the likes of Pryce credited McNamara with being instrumental in the recovery...



I don't think that's the reason. The club has slashed costs everywhere off the field, but I don't think the playing budget has been slashed. Indeed, we are told we are spending the cap - or are budgeted to anyway - so that can't be the reason. I have posted elsewhere why I suspect certain other teams are getting far more bang for their bucks; some of those reasons are currently being addressed by the good officers of HMRC, and there is anecdotal evidence that those investigations may have opened a can of worms over areas like offshore employee benefit trusts. I also wonder whether in the old days we were able to take advantage of certain devices and opportunities that are (for whatever reason) no longer available to us. But I speculate...,



"Getting used to"?? Give over! Visiting speccies were falling away in droves in the second season. Have you forgotten the regular vitriolic threads every week about the "fascist" stewards, about the poxy stand away fans were allocated, about the segregation, about the problems in getting a pint, about pretty well everything?

Yes, you could get a better atmosphere given the dynamics of the ground, and there were plusses and minuses. I was a big proponent of the "Back to Odsal" campaign as people around at the time will know. One of the main reasons was that financially the situation at VP (including the fact that what we were paying was based on much bigger crowds than we were getting, and we were very much the poor relation losing control over most of our own destiny) looked untenable. I understood that Geoffrey Richmond told Caisley pretty forcefully that we were bound to get bigger crowds than up at Odsal cos it was a far better stadium, and the financial arrangements were based on his assumptions - but that's anecdotal.

I didn't have a lot of sympathy with the "its too far to go" brigade - indeed, it was much more convenient for me than Odsal is.

I think what has most disappointed me since is that the financial situation surrounding the ground at Odsal has proved at least equally untenable. I've never been able to get to the bottom of just why that should be so, given the Club's strong desire to return there at the time, but you have to wonder about seriously inadequate due diligence maybe coupled with significantly over-optimistic budgeting (read Caisley's Chairman's Statement in the 2003 (I think it was ) accounts for a good indication of that - it was all the fans' fault for not turning up in ever-increasing numbers. I've got my own ideas, but not for on here, although (despite what some folk choose to believe) it looks like the council relieved themselves of a bigger obligation than maybe many realised . But either way, its clear the ground is costing far more than the club expected at the time of the return to Odsal.



See above.

It's not a squad that should be in 13th place though no matter what financial problems we have.

Still Noble was the head coach and not McNarama.

This is a fair point. Head Coach or Manager is a very different job with very different pressures to that of Assistant Coach. If Leon had credited another member of the management team, Martin Clawson for example, with being instrumental in the recovery then it would be far more obvious that this would have little bearing on his ability to go on to run the whole operation.

Sport is full of top quality coaches who never go on to Manage as coaching is what they are good at. It is entriely plausible, particularly gien the apparently unstinting support that he has from the players both on and off the record, that Macca is one of these.

But there was lots of talk at the time that Macnamara was the one doing the actual coaching.
Or have I just made that up?

And still Pryce credited Macca (as assistant) with much of what happened to pull the team around.

Make of that what you will.

It is entirely possible that that was the case. However, Pryce and Noble were not exactly best of mates were they?

That`s true enough but the head coach isn`t the one who does most day by day coaching; he has other coaches for that. It`s not really that strange that players might have strong bond with these coaches since they are the people they probably have most contact with.

What happens on the terraces is nothing to do with what happens on the pitch. Your crowd on Friday would have been a good crowd at Belle Vue, Hudds, and probably a record at Quins. I remember the days of 20,000 in there for the Leeds derby.

Not sure Fridays help, and your poor performances don't either, but your downfall is more to do with the old cycle of good teams having their decade and other teams then catching up. Bradford bullied their way around the league, and then other teams learned how to deal with it. Leeds and Saints are enjoying the fruits of a good youth structure. That has a long-term effect for other clubs, because the quality youth want to stay with the club that wins things, and so they keep the best players, and success becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy. Ten years ago, Leeds were the permanent nearly-rans. Now they are the top side. They will slide when the Sinfield's and the Burrows move on, and then someone else will take their place.

Go back fifteen years, and who would have predicted the Wigan trophy cabinet getting so dusty. Your time will come again. There's even a chance that Wakey's might again, although if you were there the last time we had it, you'll probably need wheeling into Old Trafford.

just a case of how patient our fans are and how this period will affect the clubs financial position that is my major worry

Although you don't seem to have the salary bill you used to have. Bit of stability, bring the kids through, and then onwards and upwards. Maybe its time for the Bulls to take a step back, accept that immediate glory will elude them, and take a ten-year look at things, and build a long-term future. That is what Leeds did, and the quality of the kids that have come through there is phenomenal.

It was 2005 that we last seriously challenged for things so we are almost half way through a 10 year look.