Mcmanus comes across really well here.

Should be Featherstone if life was fair, ......I have chosen the Bulls. It will be the Bulls.

He didn't leave until 2018 by which time TWP had already been part of the "Eurpean" pyramid, with Rimmer followin on from the big fella.
It certainly seems that Wood was the "matchmaker" and the person primarily responsible for getting TWP into the game over here.
Happy to be proved wrong, my grey matter is getting more grey by the day.

I don't need to "prove you wrong" on anything, don't make every discussion a fight. All I am saying is Wood was heading for the RLIF and he just waved TWP through and the Championship clubs were happy with that. Superleague as a separate organisation left them all to it, as they are now doing with Ottawa who are already backsliding on their commitment to use Canadian players.

I'd be interested to know how many actual French players would walk on the pitch for the start of the first French Superleague derby between Les Catalans and Toulouse that you advocate??

Give me a number??

London have a terrible ground and Featherstone don't do player development they do dual Reg. Seems like it is your choices that stink?

Toulouse? They are guests of the RFL and Championship?? What would you say to member clubs with SL ambitions if you hoisted Toulouse into Superleague?

Whatever English clubs do or don't have on the player development side they can bring it in. AFAIK going forward reserves are compulsory, NOT academies. Leigh don't have any Reserves but can just create a reserve team. If Keighley could do it.....

The sooner ''member'' and ''guest'' status's are abolished, the sooner the game can move forward.

I would think somewhere between 12 and 20 ?

What and where is this 'iconic' stadium that Bradford are regularly connected with?

The iconic stadium is the hole in the ground in Southern Bradford that is so prohibitively expensive to maintain it would make you go into administration. Mysteriously some wakefield fans in particular think being gifted the obligation to stay in it was an act of great kindness by the RFL.

At the time, so did the Bulls board and many of their fans, so did the Bulls fans.
Peppercorn rent to commercial rent was never going to work and those that brokered the deal needed their bumps testing.

Most Trinity fans, at the time, said that it would be better to go into admin, just as our club had but, some seemed to know better.

It was the story about protecting "an iconic stadium" that really irked.

Once rammed with 102,000 fans but, never "iconic"

[url[/url at the time it was when the rfl got involved it was to help you out and it was the bank that chose otherwise, you can't blame us for seeing favouritism when we too have our stadium issues,
I can understand the problem of expensive maintenance for the size of the stadium but you should understand that you can't have a governing body interfering where it is not right to do so. Your council is as much to blame as ours and should get their act together.

I hold no malice towards Bradford and wish them every success in getting back to SL

Where we disagree is that you think it was favouritism, in other words a random act of kindness by the RFL toward Bradford. Take a step back and ask yourself does that sound a bit odd to you. I'm genuinely as far from a conspiracy theorist as you'll get, but there has to be more to it than simply wanting to help Bradford out. The RFL may well have not wanted Odsal to be lost, but as to why I'm not sure. I sometimes think it would be nice for a few other clubs to be inflicted with a similar kindness (and other meddling) and see how you get on.

It wasn't worth it on financial grounds. It wasn't worth it by tying us to a ground that's unaffordable, and it wasn't worth it because it fostered ill-will towards the club and the governing body.

It was only "worth it" as the "dodgy deal" prevented Bradford from going pop, thus, keeping them in the top flight.
We know that if failed spectacularly and actually made things a whole lot worse but, it was all about saving the most successful club of the SL era.
I dont think there was any additional conspiracy. It was just a line put out by the RFL to try and justify the "loan" and everyone has been paying for it ever since and with Bradford moving in with Dewsbury, which in the circumstances, has kept them breathing, they need some serious cash injection to get them back to Bradford.

I can't see it happening, quite a few people have promised the earth and not delivered in Bradford, is there any appetite for a return to Odsal?

Tolouse, TWP, Ottowa, New York, they are the future of the game, not a dated old ground with banked up in goals. Wakefield is bad enough with no cover and the block of flats at one end.

We really would be better with Doncaster in The Keepmoat in SL than a failed Bradford relaunch.

Odsal is the biggest white elephant in RL.

All this talk of it being 'iconic'- is there a RL fan who really enjoyed watching a game there?... No cover, miles from the pitch, poor atmosphere, I don't see a single selling point of why anybody would want that relic back, when surely we should be looking to make the game look modern and worth investing in?

Yup, pretty much the nail on the head. The game and it's audience have changed, I miss the days of The Boulevard, but I think that is more wistful memories of going as a kid and young adult, rather than it having been better than the KC. The one place I do miss is Charleston club in Hull, but that was the people more than the place.

If only

I think you're exaggerating a little. Back in the glory days with it approaching 20k, say a Leeds / Bradford derby it was a phenomenal experience with a superb atmosphere. I don't really think anyone was that far from the pitch either. Comparable to Hull KR at the time, with main stands nearer the pitch and behind the posts further away. Nevertheless, as a Bradford fan of nearly 40 years for whom Odsal holds some truly magical memories, I don't want to go back.

It is not possible to turn that crater into a ground fit for the future. As I've said before, let Bradford Council and the RFL sell up and make their money however they wish, and lets get a community stadium where the upturned boat was across the road.

and where would the money for a community stadium come from?

Well there are several possible options to explore. By permanently vacating Odsal the council might be able to sell the asset make a profit and help with some of the financing of a community Stadium. There's also our sister club (of sorts) Bradford Park Avenue. They've improved their own ground lately but a bespoke community stadium shared with us would be attractive. The Council have lost a major swimming pool complex in the Richard Dunn and have various published aspirations for improving the fitness of Bradfordians etc. A modest community stadium on the same site with all weather pitches etc could go some way to addressing that.

I'm not looking for any handouts, but I think there's ways and means of getting a stadium for Bradford built, and for the RFL to recoup their investment in Odsal.

I can't see why anyone would want to buy Odsal, hardly a prime development site in a very poor area of Bradford...?

The Boulevard, Fartown, Knowsley Road, Central Park, Wilderspool, Hilton Park, I go back to Parkside, McLaren Field et all always had some atmosphere felt like double the crowd and when you walked past the changing room you could always smell linement ... oh the days...

Thrum Hall on boxing days happy memories....

Crown Flat with its bloody slope....

There was always someone fighting at Wilderspool, and not on the pitch.

You never went to the Barley Mow ground then, or Blackpool's Derby Rd or back of the gasworks opposite Turners coach park.