The club should have had plan B.1, plan B.2, plan B.3 etc and plan C!
There are enough of em down there to have had this covered all ways up.
When the decision to go to PI was announced, it should have just been a case of picking which option, dotting the i's and crossing the t's and then announcing it.
That makes it look like they know what they're doing in the eyes of the rfl and in the eyes of the supporters. The fact of the matter is they did not expect the decision to be a negative one (fact) and from minute one they have been like startled rabbits.
Why wait for a shareholders meeting? Shareholders (a small % of all supporters) have never been consulted in anyway before, the need to get a positive message out ASAP to as many as possible was what was needed. The club has failed, because it placed all it eggs in one basket, and didn't give plans B enough consideration.
As ever we are a club without proper direction, the RFL will be glad to see us as the semi proffesional outfit we truly are, in the NL.

Don't think you will find many outside of Wakey agreeing with you there, especially the likes of Widnes and Fax and co, nobody has a divine right to stop in SL.

No you can't sign the deal, but you can know all the alternatives in advance, so you have a good idea of the cost etc.. of the option you end up going with.

What is the framework agreement? It could be as little as Ted asked Barnsley if we could play there and they said yes in theory and thats as far as it went? So the details would then be very important, such as how much rent they want, what proportion of food and beer money we can have etc...

I'm bemused as to why "ordinary" fans on here feel that they should be privvy to the agreements being set up by the club!!

Yes, I too am dying to hear some positive news about our future, but I guess it will come with time. I don't subscribe, like the doom-mongers on here, that no news is bad news, nor do I blindly accept that everything is rosy.

What I do know is that there is a correct process to follow..

We should know it by now, because the club should have known it well in advance of the Pickles decision. Plus without us, there will be no club.

You must see that no news is deemed as bad news and that all the signs here point to the fact that the club have not prepared Plan B properly in advance. They even had an extra 2 to 3 weeks to work on it after the initial decision on Newmarket was deferred

No, the only point anyone has made, is that perhaps merchandise/ticket sales would have been affected over Xmas. However, as the decision about plan B, would affect next year's sales, not this year's particularly, I'm not convinced by that argument.

There are perhaps a couple of scenarios...the club still have some details to agree with wherever we are going to go...obviously there is nothing to tell then and this is not an urgent matter, as in we need a ground tomorrow.

The other scenario is that a deal is done and there are reasons dictating when the announcement is made...maybe political reasons...maybe about building pressure elsewhere...

I guess we will find out soon enough.

to clear up your bemusement, its not that we dont know the agreements, its the fact that that there wasnt an immediate fallback plan ready to be announced on the day of the referal, as kinley rightly says we, the normal fast depleting fans of the club, are its lifeblood, and we have no bloody idea what is going on, where we will play, or indeed if we will actually apply for a SL franchise, baring in mind if we do its more that likely to be played out outside wakefield.

Don't kid yourself that "we" are the lifeblood of the club - Ted's money is considerably more important.

"We" - the vocal half dozen on here, do not represent "the fans" - which in some ways is a shame, because people on here clearly care about the club.

I still don't get where this expectation/demand to be told everything immediately comes from.

We don't need to be in a substitute ground for 14 months - wouldn't it be a bit silly (in a business sense), to be committed to something now, beyond an outline, agreement in principle - binding or otherwise?

1 teds money gave us a present, it will not give us a future
2 says it all, the vocal half dozen used to be about a vocal 100, and we discussed rugby, sometimes.
3 The demand is from those with some business sense that know that a clear statement should have been pre prepared about our intentions on that day even if it was only "we are in negotiations and confirm it will not affect any bid for a SL franchise"
4 I sort of agree about the agreement, cos im good like that

Regarding the Shareholders meeting, does this include those who purchased shares around 2009?

If so will the club be informing them, or do they have to bring along their certificate as proof of their holding?

I think it's because you can't seem to be run like a family corner shop business then expect people to take you seriously when you talk about following correct procedures. The problem is we've been led down the garden path more times than I care to remember so people are suspicious of the club's capabilities to find a solution to the current problem. Despite the nods, winks and don't worries of those 'in the know' we are still going nowhere fast seems it's not just the mere ordinary fans who haven't got a clue it's those who are actually involved as well.

Well in an ideal world they should inform holders but we'll see, last time i went they had a list on entry and that should include all share holders. You could take your certificate along just in case but i bought some around that time.

In a nuttshell and some of the "ordinary fans" on here have gone way above that with sponsorship and the like, now i could see the other side of the debate if the path was not so long and well trodden.

roll up for the resident comedian,your pure quality

It was always likely that Newmarket wouldn't be ready for the start of the 2012 season if the application hadn't been called in. The PI guidelines mean that it has to commence within 22 weeks of the decision being made to call the application in. It's not a major scheme that would need a ridiculously long PI (unlike a new international airport for example) so the PI should be completed with in weeks rather than months once its underway. The SoS then has something like 7 weeks to give his decision.

On this basis, the outcome should be known in late summer. While this isn't ideal from a franchising perspective, there's no reason to think that we shouldn't be moving into Newmarket at the start of the 2013 season.

In the meantime we share at a ground that already meets SL standards (presumably Oakwell) - the only difference from Plan A being that we're there for a full season rather than half a season.




It's clear that a good number of posters on this forum have lost a proper sense of perspective in what's happening. The various rumours of impending doom are ONLY on this forum - or do you really think that WTWRLFC has so much power over the press that it's surpressing all sorts of rumours??? Yes, we are clearly at risk of losing our franchise, but no amount of moaning about this, that or t'other will change that.

If you are really fans of this great club then take a

& get behind the club FFS. If you don't want to do that then we'll be better off without you.

WE ARE WAKEFIELD - [uTOGETHER[/u WE ARE STRONGER

ok then il go to the away games as long as i dont have to sink another penny into our badly run club. hows it going board member.

what right have you to tell anyone that the club would be better off without them, ithink youl find the club need to hang to all its got, stronger my backside, the clubs a shambles.

First I'm not a member of the BoD - just a fan & shareholder, albeit one who has worked with the club as part of a previous job.

As for my opinion about whether you want to get behind the club or not, it isn't about whether you go to the home or the away games. It's much simpler than that - if you don't want to support the club 100% then pi$$ off to Cas or Leeds instead.

personally ive never said i didnt want to support the club but il not support the bod or the coaching staff and when i see you,you can tell me what to do to my face. to pi$$ off.

Well unless you or someone you know has got a few million quid to spare you're going to have to put up with the current BoD & coaching staff for this season at least. I would be far more worried about the business credentials of someone buying the club before the franchising decision is known than I am about the current management (accepting that they do have their faults - but then again how many of us don't).

ive got a few pence that should be enough, well take a look at lord teds business credentials, hes certainly doing very well. iva, cva, benidorm, selling players, thornes, newmarket, ossett, denby dale.

Buying the club may not cost the earth, but injecting the cash that's needed to transform it is another thing altogether. Like I said the current BoD have their faults, but there clearly isn't anyone with the combination of available funds & business sense to take things forward for the time being.

including the current board of directors!!! Glad your finally onside with popular opinion

he forgot them

Easy mistake to make

Think we are too far down the line now for a change to be honest, I respect what people have done to get us to this point, but currently we have a club and more importantly a team that people in the town and now even the die hards dont want.

A year ago we had the world at our feet, but somebody somewhere got the maths wrong, hence for whatever reason players left but more importantly were not replaced by players of the same quality, despite us presumably having budgetted for their departed salaries. Every move since the Brough debacle has been a money saving move, and now we are where we are.

Said it before but this started when we lost to catalan at home at the end of 2009, and then failed to nail down Mr Brough with the money we didnt need to spend another half back or hooker, from there on in we were screwed.