can certainly see the difference nowadays

but cant blame ken davy , tried in the past with the marketing but to no avail so instead of cutting the playing squad down seems hes cut the staff instead

Change of topic - anyone know where would be good to park at hull please ?

park and ride as you come off the a63, 1st exit after driving under the humber bridge signposted hessle, follow signs for village hotel, aldi on the left, park and ride on the right

walton street car park will be a nightmare to get out as the car park stewards bugger off before full time and its a free for all

As i don't actually work there or for the club i only really know what i'm told which are:

Fill the Executive boxes for our games bringing in much needed income while striking up good relations with the hope of them returning.

Sell General/matchday/kit/player sponsorship and with the player sponsorship it's the 1st time we've sold all the players before a season has started i'm led to believe.

Get out to current and potential partners and try and arrange deals with them to come on board and support us financially and get word round that we are worth dealing with.

Running the club within the budgets set with the limited finances available to them.

Employing the best staff we can, again within our budget, to give the best coaching, medical assistance, sports science, training, personal help to our players, not to mention those needed to tutor and teach our scholarship kids at the zone.

Sourcing the best deals for merchandise for the club shop, the players kit, equipment, nutrients etc

Simpler stuff like finding the best deal for the club regarding printing out programmes, fixture posters, cards, carrier bags for the club shop.

Trying to appease and convince not only their paymasters (Ken, the board) but the customers(us, the fans, the sponsors etc) that they ARE doing their best with the resources they have/haven't got.

Importantly though it's hard enough to do in this town as it is but considering we're trying to do it with a premier league football team on our shoulder, no major silverware for 50+ years, a general apathy in the town towards the club/sport, a generally negative fanbase, a lack of finance available to add more members of staff then i personally don't thnk anyone is doing a bad job at the club considering.
What i do know is that the staff i know/have dealings with and talk to are 100% devoted to the club and their job and bust a gut to make sure they have explored every avenue and option to grow this club.

Every one of them is as frustrated as the average fan, most of them are actually fans of the club too, knowing where we want the club to be but not being in a position to get there without the next step.

If you want Andrew Watson to update the club's twitter account why not ask him to? i dunno he may already do it but as that's not his role within the club then maybe not, i do know him and his team have done a very good job of filling the Exec boxes, selling sponsorships etc which as far as i know is what they are being paid to do!!!.

Brickmakers, excuse for a paaarnt after while the traffic dies

I always say it’s up to Ken he takes the losses I think it is run very poorly ( in a difficult market these days but it was poor before that) if you keep doing the same thing you get the same results and if lack of staff is now the excuse one or two people need to look in the mirror and ask why in the good times the business did not grow.

I don't think it would have taken much to host a media day, or to have an away kit - it's pretty basic stuff for a professional club in the top division of rugby league.

Regardless of who is working there, marketing and merchandising of the club should be top of the agenda after the squad.

spot on, like you sat its basic stuff , even clubs in lower divisions can get the two kits out on time

How long does it take to organise such a thing? It could be done in a few hours?

It’s not as if the start of the season comes out of the blue. They’ve had months to do this.

I could never understand why he puts up with the shoddy work on the office side.

About four/five years back they wrote to me to encourage me to buy a season ticket. Good idea. But they included a ty bit of photocopied paper with all the sponsors logos on. It was like something a village hall committee would have put together. If I were one of those sponsors I’d have been livid that they’d butchered my corporate branding.

Stuff like that isn’t hard to get right and it’s not expensive to get right.

Are there still those promotional posters up in the Packhorse showing Eorl Crabtree? “Eorl Crabtree runs with the force of a small family car” or something like that? They were certainly there last season, after he’d retired! Not expensive or time consuming to take them down.

I remember last year seeing a poster at the stadium urging me to “Join the Giants Revolution”. That campaign was in 2008 or so!

As for two people? Well I know for a fact that at the height of Bullmania there were only three people plus a summer job student in the marketing team at Bradford, all working out of a portacabin. I know because I was the summer job student.

So it’s not a lack of resources IMO. And it may not even be a lack of effort. It’s a lack of direction and strategic leadership. And it’s been going on a long time.

Ok then, well there is vacancies at the club so i suggest all you with the money and know how get in touch ASAP, you sound just like the sort of people the club have been crying out for!!

Hopefully we will see an improvement very quickly then.

I would happily work for them, but I don’t think they would pay enough to make it worth my time.

And it’s a big job. It’s much bigger than just knocking out a few tweets every day.

Daz, we all love this club, that's why we spend so much time on these boards, you no doubt have more inside knowledge than us, but our frustration is because we want to see the club progress and believe it can from a few very basic changes, we just seem to be in a downward spiral off the field and it's depressing!

i agree and it is, and it's not about having inside knowledge it's about listening to what people are saying and seeing what they are doing. The people in these jobs are, like i've already said, frustrated too.

Our crowds are falling year on year, this means year on year it is costing more for Ken to sustain the club, because we're losing money we have to make cuts and the backroom/marketing were the victims rather than the playing side, that's been suffering for a few years now.

Rather than asking me people need to ask those who don't come and have stopped coming why....i am as frustrated and annoyed as anyone the way thre club is run BUT i can also understand how and why it is been, others seem to think we have a bottomless pit of money and are just choosing to not do the obvious stuff.

Anyway, that's my last on it, the subject is Hull away and i am damn looking forward to it and the start of another, hopefully successful, season

I agree we all make comments because we love the club and want it to do well. I am going to be straight though it’s a joke how things are run and a new direction is needed and that means a change at the top and that should have happened a long time ago if not nothing will change. That’s down to Ken surely he can see what we can ,if not he can let it drift along and keep going backwards as it is now.

there is no defending not releasing the alternative shirt .

why the club would not want to hold a media day is beyond me, need all the media bytes we can get



lets just hope we got off too a good start to the season!

the squad will be interesting for this game!!!

who really is injured and who isnt.....

from what the club are saying only cudjoe, mellor, wardle and wood are out for sure.

only cudjoe would be considered a shoe in for the first 17 out of those but still its a big one, club captain, positive sounds coming out of the club though about his recovery, could be back in march

walto
Walton st car park next to the stadium 5 quid and if you want to go for a pint park view pub is only 2 mins walk

Jerry and Wakeman out for you guys apparently

yep looking like we will be missing mcgillvary, cudjoe and wakeman

not to mention symonds and co

not what we wanted for the start of sl is it....

ah well we may be surprised!

Will definitely be interesting to see whos in the squad.

I dont think there is any point mentioning Symonds at all anymore.

As expected a few more injuries than we thought.

Sounds like Muprhy will get the nod over McIntosh if Jerry is fit judging by Stones interview on our site. We should be going with Darnell now though.

Clough will be a guarantee as seems like hes one of Stones favorites. Cant help but feel though a team realistically with Clough, Ferguson and Murphy in starting 17 wont have a realistic chance of getting in the top 4.

Id like to see us line up like:

1. Mamo
2. Jerry
3. Gaskell
4. Turner
5. McIntosh
6. Rankin
7. Brough
8. Seb
9. O Brien
10. Walne
11. Ferguson
12. Lawrence
13. Hinchliffe

14. Roberts
15. Leeming - Bring him off the bench as hes just over an injury
16. Taai
17. Smith/Dickinson (Wakeman if fit)

Its time for Smith and Dickinson to really step up their game this year and make a claim for a starting shirt.

team i think we will see is

mamo

mcintosh
turner
gaskell
murphy

leeming
brough
rankin

ikahihifo
taai
lawrence
hinchcliffe
roberts

bench-
obrien
ferguson
clough
walne

dont think we will see mcgillvary, wont be risked.
would like to see taai and ikahihifo team up at prop.

hull will just pepper us with kicks from sneyd... hope we are upto the task on dealing with them.

hull -8 with the bookies, think that will be having my money.

theres no current vacancies showing on the website ?

Murphy was woeful at wakey. Hope it was partly rustiness partly returning to his old club- either way he’s going to struggle against hulls strong outside edges if he doesn’t improve massively.
Please lord not Ormsby.

Hull squad announced, no Liam Watts, Chris Green or Carlos Tuimavave