Does anyone understand it? I assume we thought more would stick around from 2021 and that Northerners would come to London as there are lots of jobs and it’s a world city. I can see the logic to both but when did they realise neither was going to come true? Our default was to get on the phone to Australia.
What was all that eye wash about JC knowing the London scene. He’s brought in 3 from L1: 2 left tout suite and we’ve mined Skolars above and beyond common sense and decency. Bit of a shambles really. Nice ground though. Sigh.

Perhaps a more constructive line of discussion is what do we think will happen next year. I may be over optimistic but I don’t think we will know we are relegated or staying up until deep into the season leaving us a restricted recruitment window. If we are in L1 we have, without disrespect, quite a few of that standard on the books on 2 year contracts but even then we have mined Skolars dry so we’d only have Midlands really to plunder as it looks like Northerners won’t come, especially to another L1 club. If we stay up- again what do we do? We have a substandard team, can’t recruit Northerners. We can hope to get a couple on loan but our ability to do so depends on what SL clubs think we do with their loanees. How productive has it been for Ferreira, Borough and Chisholm to come to London? Either way we are in a right 2 and 8. So it’s a team full of 2/3rd tier Aussies. Not really a brave new dawn is it.

The recruitment policy was deluded (unless a relegation fight was the target).

Lose to Dewsbury 1st May, and we will know where we will be next season...

Saying that lose to Dewsbury in front of only 500 fans, and I don't expect Broncos to be around next season

Me neither

Northerners won’t come,

Think that should read northerners cant afford to come. housing and cost of living makes it way out of their price range. If they are playing part time rugby they need a very high salary and they still wont be able to afford the standard of living they currently have. Rent £1200 minimum for a small 1 bed flat 2 beds if they are lucky. Council tax add a further £50 to £60 per month to what they pay now, Add another £1000 for the same car, add on top of this food and petrol increases. Most people who live in the south are normal people struggling to pay bills like everyone in the north and not the affluent people who play football, rock stars, actors, merchant bankers, MPs, stock brokers etc etc that everyone thinks they are

I'm tempted to ask if there was a recruitment policy in 2022 or whether anyone who could tell the difference between an Easter Egg & a rugby ball got a contract? Although I suppose even that is a policy of sorts!

I think there was a policy it just didn’t make it past 1st contact and we defaulted to Aussies and anyone from Skolars who could stand up straight. More and more I think we don’t have a pot that is why we are where we are. The massive expense of the ground(s) is a red herring and ring fenced. What we have for team and front and back room staff is akin to L1 sides. Seen like that what’s happening makes some sense. Anyway another away spanking this time from Leigh and then the crunch matches Rams and Newcastle. Lose those and everything falls down.

Northerners came to Skolars, Oxford and Hemel part time. They generally lived and trained up north and commute for matches. Frankly that's a more realistic way of getting experienced players than expecting them to relocate for a nine or so month part time contract.

Many of us tried to explain to the club (or at least the club's simian rep on here) that this plan wouldn't work. We'd seen it before, in times when London hadn't yet become one of the world's most expensive cities to live in. Of course, no-one listened.

Hi,

I do not think any of Danny, Tom or Jermaine could have put out a Championship standard team this season.

The powers that be made it so that no contracts of either a full time or part time status could be offered until the season was over which alienated existing and new potential signings.

Offers were much less than the player was already on, and some offers were said to be under £200 a week.

It was thus possible for offers such as £15k with accommodation being sufficient to take players north.

I think the idea of signing players from the north and paying near nothing was absurd and ludicrous.

The minimum the club would need to do is offer accommodation, enough money to live on, and help getting work.

If they had to break the club by going part time, they should have signed about 6 first team standard players and made them also the manager, assistant manager, head of commercial, media manager etc.

They could have got some good older players then.

After a year or two they might get better jobs and vacate them for new signings.

Is Hughes running out of money or interest ? Is he seeking other investment or expertise to save the club ?

Thanks Mark. A devastating post which makes for awful reading. Quite how anyone thought moving to a SL standard stadium and paying players next to nothing would work is brain boggling.

Quite how those northern based players we were promised managed to resist such an offer will forever be a mystery, to the clueless people who promoted the theory, but not to anyone with any experience of southern RL.

Sadly a very Broncos thing to do.

My take on it

Hughes spat out his dummy around mid season last year when it was obvious that even if we made the playoffs, we would not be going up. In addition with the idiocity to hike the season tickets so much, which meant nobody would pay the prices to watch the tripe on offer, meant that not only was we not going up, but we had gates of circa 250 people.

So he blamed the team, decided he was not offering contracts, he was going part time. No wonder that the players fell off at the end of last season, what incentive was there to play a playoff match they would lose, when they all knew they would leave at the end of the season anyway.

I'm really not worried about next year, I think the whole franchise rests on the next 2 home matches. Lose to Dewsbury, and you will have <500 for the Newcastle game , and those 2 points happening will cause him to just stop.

Going to try and enjoy the dewsbury game I really fear it will be one of the last games played by the club

I think you may well be right Crash. Worth also saying that last years 250 gates included a sizeable proportion of friends and family. I’d say under 200 paying guests was the norm: failing to take any steps to address that really was a mistake and disconnected many from the club it seems. As to Dewsbury : with respect to them not a major draw but I really urge everyone to turn up because this is the season right there. As for the Newcastle Friday night game with no travelling fans I suspect sub 500- I’ll go straight from work but even then no walk in the park to get there.

Hi all,

I'll try to give a balanced opinion.

Firstly, when David Hughes was first involved with the club he was in his mid 50s and a working trader, whose bonuses alone were said to be more than enough to pay his entire contribution to the club.

I'm led to believe he is now 78 years old and I would be astonished if he is still working regularly, though it is not impossible.

My view is that his own personal financial circumstances have changed.

The club's income has also massively reduced, from over 1 million in 2019, to probably the best part of a million in 2020, with the parachute payment to probably only a couple of hundred grand or so as of now, before the gate.

Media articles of the past suggest that Mr Hughes was very much of the view he wanted to "protect his family pot".

Where I think his head was turned, is that he has been sold on the idea that Featherstone, for a much lower spend, has managed to build a borderline SL standard squad; whilst even Whitehaven last season did very well on a minimal budget.

In some ways, I think Hughes felt that there could be an opportunity to bring in very good part time players; players who in theory might not even join at all with a full time commitment.

I do also think that the senior leadership team at the Broncos felt that the London trained players could be directly replaced by similar or even higher quality players from the academy and/or that there were players just as good at London Skolars.

For instance, if Sam Davis did not sign you could put in Rob Oakley whilst Gideon Boafo could be swapped for a Macani or a Caro.

Also, there were plenty of tip offs of third division players ready to step up; about 8 from Skolars, 2 or 3 from West Wales plus perhaps more realistic prospects such as Foster.

I think the club was all too willing to overlook the continual past unavailability of players too such as Albert as well as over-rating existing players abilities.

For instance I did not perceive that either of Leyland or Horsman were midtable Championship standard, nor quite a few others such as Oakley, Blakemore and Latu. In fact, there were quite a few I thought were no better than the bottom three in League one. I had previously seen the Broncos reserves away at Coventry Bears, and did not come away impressed.

I felt that the better club trained players were Boafo (who was one of our best 4 players) plus Jones, Sam Davis, Hindmarsh and perhaps Williams.

The mid level ones were probably Hodson, Adebiyi, Ogden and Egodo; I could see why they might be released due to missing games or perhaps lack of tryscoring threat.

The ones I felt might be lacking the necessary ability or who were just finished were Horsman, Leyland, Oakley and Blakemore.

Also, of the existing squad, I felt that Hankinson, Miski, Sammut and Fozard were critical players. We needed players of this calibre. I could see why you would crack down on non performers like Moran and Navarette and maybe some of the injury prone lads. But not all had let the club down.

Players like Walters and Hindmarsh simply refused to agree terms; others like Meadows were enticed on relatively modest terms; he is then said to have played in Hodson. Other players moved to take an actual offer after waiting all season; for instance Aston waited all year to go.

I was told that the club did target past leavers where it was felt there was some chance, but for instance Toby Everett and Jon Magrin were said to have settled down and others like Joe Keyes may feel they were treated poorly in the past. Also, some of the players were at clubs with greater prospects like Halifax.

I can see why there has been a desire for cost savings and I can see why things have gone the way they have, but I think the club has been perceived as having bad people involved; also that these bad people have bad judgement.

The truth is that the catchment area for Featherstone is perfect; there are about 5 or 6 clubs in each of the top three leagues in close proximity.

Whitehaven might one season in ten hit lucky.

But you can't throw the baby out with the bathwater in a catchment area of few or no replacement players.

Depressing but highly plausible.The idea that there was plenty of like for like quality at Skolars can only have been based on the belief that it was other weaker players and/or poor coaching that held them back. By hiring pretty much the entire 1st team and coach and assistant coach they unpicked their own logic.

The problems faced by the club both on and off the park stem from inactivity in key areas years ago. Those clubs who actively engaged with their audiences over a prolonged period of time, with regular and meaningful communication are the clubs who are doing best as we emerge from the covid period.
Hughes decision to downgrade his investment was always going to come. His inability to get anyone else to join him points to both how niche a sport we are and how his personality doesn't always fit with others.
If the club had knuckled down and worked to a 5 or 10 year target back in 2009, (I say) they'd still be at quins, till be in SL and probably have the 6 or 7k fans needed to stay afloat.
As it is, the writing is in the wall now. Even if we survive the drop, I can't see either the dons being keen on us staying and there's little chance of Hughes reopening his chequebook, so we may limp through another season, but it'll be to an aging and shrinking audience.
It really could have been so different if the other SL club/RFL had let Lenagan keep his interest in Quins RL......but.like the decision to promote Leigh over us, they showed how narrow minded the sport is.

The death knell for League and, to a lesser extent, the Broncos came when (COVID aside) the Toronto Wolfpack was voted out and Leigh were promoted. Now that's narrow-minded from the M62 chairmen.

In the time it has taken David Hughes to cremate the club (2013-2022), Sarries have invested in Copthall and added 2,500 to their average gates, The Irish have moved in to Brentford and added 2,500 and Wasps relocated to coventry and added 4k.
I agree that the RFL and essentially a handful of northern businessmen have a fair amount of blood on their hands, but in this post covid era, it really will be each to their own for the foreseeable, so this master plan of Hughes and Loubser is even more puzzling.

There's no way a part time side based in the south will attract the calibre of players needed to challenge for a SL spot, so why move away from Ealing? Loubser and Hughes need to find a solution to this and find it fast.....it's either spend more and get full time players or move the club back to Ealing and grow the club/fanbase up.

I've said it before. For every Million Hughes has flushed down the bowl, he's flushed a million of central funding too.....I'd be back at Ealing next year with a mix of full time and part time players, the academy, the Kids and the Ladies all playing there and a massive spend on Customer Relations/Communications.

I admire your optimism that there will be a next season Orange. Hope you are right.

Hi all,

I have long since held the view that the club will not win a game this season; a view I held before the season started and which was only further confirmed in the first ten minutes v Widnes and again during the Whitehaven debacles.

The reason is that the side resembles one I played for.

In my days as a player, I played for Lancaster University in all four of the student leagues (National, North, North West 1 and North West 2) and we had a side when at its peak won the SRL plate v Hull University and which was capable of winning v sides with Super League academy players and had as many as five or six student Internationals including the Scotland Captain, the Ireland full back and both halves plus an England Prop.

But we had a period where nearly all the team graduated and we just have the collective quality to threaten the opposition tryline. In simple terms, we were just overpowered. I remember going up to places like Leeds and Leeds Met and they would have three teams and a women's side and we would have just the one team, sometime on a matchday with just 12 to 13 players and very much like the Coleman side just try to hold back a vastly superior side.

In simple terms I do not think that Latu, Macani or Grant are capable of regularly scoring tries in the Championship and all are marginal selections.

I did not think any of Thomas, Coates, Horsman or Leyland would play well in the Championship, though was mystified that Coates was fourth choice given the showings of the other three.

I thought the pack looked ok, although the starting front row v Sheffield of Lovell, Foster and the academy lad at Hooker was shocking.

So I think we are 3 to 5 players short.

If we could do a deal with someone like St Helens to get a house full of their better academy players or even Featherstone we might have a shot.

Dribs and drabs won't be enough.

Like my old University side in the National League, you have got to get to the opposition tryline to be a credible threat.

This is one of the few things that could save us.

I (and I suspect many) would agree with your analysis of the quality of the side. Given the lack of ambition in recruitment, why do you think the club made a ground move (especially one that required the additional expense of separate training and academy facilities) ? This is the thing that least makes sense to me given we were not going attract new fans with such a poor team.