Christ that image of Rimmer in the Mirror article just makes me want to sock him in the chops

As a long time Trinity season ticket holder, I gave up thinking about the benefits I would get from being a season ticket holder, remember the great words JFK uttered back in the 1960s “Think not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country “ change the words country to clubs, then this should apply to all RL fans.

"Do it for your club" is something that stopped washing with Bulls fans quite a few years ago, as it's all we've been asked to do for the last decade+ with constantly disappointing returns.

Think that's called sport... Maybe if we hadn't been to 5 grand finals in a row??

Yes, it's absolutely that. It's just because the team isn't doing as well as it used to. Not at all to do with being taken for idiots by (mis) management for year after year after year and being told to pay through the nose for it too.

That tosh about people leaving because the club got relegated and because favourite players don't play here anymore might work for the more casual fans, but I don't think it's relevant to many people on this forum who very much don't fall into that category.

I’m not sure it feels like MY club anymore, that’s probably the issue. It’s going to take a lot of time to fix the damage to this club, I hope any new owners are now beginning to understand this.

Nailed it here.

With the way I/we have been treated over the past 10 years; milked of cash, promised and let down, lied to and disregarded, it's going to take a lot more than pretty words and emotional blackmail to repair the trust.

TBH maybe a month or so I go I sort of wished we had gone completely so I wouldn't have to worry about it anymore.

At the moment the new peniless owners have sold off the genus of a great young team (again) to pay bills (instead of investing the money they should have to invest, as displayed in the RFLs 'fit and proper persons' test).

And although 2 players have been bought, the progress made is nowhere near enough to get me to invest my money and time in a season ticket again.

There needs to be a moratorium on the words 'Super' and 'League' at the Bulls for the next 5 years. Any member of staff suggesting it's where we are headed/where we should be/planning for etc should be dragged b0ll0ck/butt naked into the Centre of the Mirror Pool and summarily executed.

I think its fair to say there are two types of clubs in the RFL pyramid. Aspirant Superleague clubs and those that do not aspire to be in the top flight. Sawyer appears to have explained the conflict of interest in part owning Bradford and Dewsbury that we are in different categories, so in some sense not competitors. Anyway, I think it is legitimate to call us an aspirational SL club, but the timescale on that is clearly years away.

Could only agree to that if the word Administration was included

There's nothing wrong with being "aspirational" provided there is also a sense of realism.

I don't see us as much different from Dewsbury. We're no different from any championship club in that, given the chance we'd love to get to the top flight but that "chance" is really just a dream. For sure, as a 'big city club', you'd expect our name to be bandied about but, as we all know, we've been hanging on for that big investor to pop his or her head around the door for years and that person seems to have got lost. Like many I've stopped believing now - though I confess the investor dream lasted longer than Santa Claus.

Don't suppose the guy tht dropped £105m on the Euro Lottery is a closet Bulls fan?

Don't start trying to get my hopes up again - they've been dashed too often already...

Nestegg?

It's in the past now, but when we were averaging 8k crowds towards the end with a salary cap of £1.8m but TV income of £1.2m, we seemed to be making a loss of about £1/2m per year if the first admin accounts were to be believed. We were relegated the year before the new TV contract came in which increased the TV money to £1.8m per year. It's likely we could survive on that. But need money to get in there, which we don't have.

Oh yeah!

Of course, we were living Chris Caisley's dream back then. The board spent the 'Odsal settlement' money on buying players for the first team (it was really intended for ground repairs etc after the club took on that responsibility from the council) and that is where the £ half million per year losses came from. CC clearly believed that the better the team was the more fans would come flocking into Odsal. To some extent that was true but the 15/16K we were getting was always going to be the most we were likely to get. I can still remember CC's statements to the T&A berating fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. Seeds were sown, cloth was cut etc, we are where we are.

Don't want to be a CC apologist but I'm sure if he had realised the ground wouldn't be developed (thanks Morrisons) he would have left things as they were and settled for the income from the 15k crowds.

Good summary Bulliac, it should be put up as a sticky for all to see, including new forum members and our new owners. Because even in the good times the chairman was berating the fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. so no surprise, as soon as the current owners start saying that it is the first snowflake of the blizzard approaching.

Good summary Bulliac, it should be put up as a sticky for all to see, including new forum members and our new owners. Because even in the good times the chairman was berating the fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. so no surprise, as soon as the current owners start saying that it is the first snowflake of the blizzard approaching.

Caisley's view was that we had morphed into a brand bigger than the city of Bradford and that crowds could therefore continue to grow. He was to a degree correct in that we hoovered up fans from Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury etc. I know a lot of people who have cherished memories of watching us win things but have since tootled back to watching Huddersfield as it's their home town club. I've never felt the potential of core support from the city itself is much greater than 10k.

So it's confirmed that it will cost £22 to stand on the terrace next season (£20 if you pre-book).

Anyone know how these compare to Dewsbury's prices?

Match day admission

North Stand Adult: £20
North Stand Concession*: £15
North Stand under-16s: £4
South Stand and Beaumont Terrace Adult: £18
South Stand and Beaumont Terrace Concession*: £14
South Stand and Beaumont Terrace under-16s: £2

I'm no Caisley 'hater'. I think he did what he thought best, though I confess I didn't agree with all of it. Indeed, I sang "I'll support you evermore" and lived the 'glory years' to the utmost, with the rest of them.

One thing I would say though, is that the £500K losses went on for five or six years (there my have been the odd year in the middle which wasn't a big loss) starting from the settlement in 2000, so until 2006 (ish) but the Superdome fiasco lasted only for about 2 of those before the writing was on the wall. In fact I gave up on it as soon as they started telling us it might take over from Wembley as the national stadium - As if! I'd guess CC was more than cute enough to know what claptrap they were talking.

I'm pretty sure the Superdome was conceived in the early/ mid 90's when there was bidding contest to build a new national stadium. I think Odsal and Birmingham were the bids outside London and the scheme was abandonned when, unsurprisingly, Wembley was chosen.
The failed scheme that led to the council settlement was the smaller, 25k, one that was part of the Tesco development that was refused planning permission.
That was why the club moved to VP for 2 years (01/02 seasons) whilst it was built but when it got knocked back the settlement was agreed but i can't remember how much for. Some of this was used to build the Southbank and the new floodlights etc and the rest was supposed to cover maintainence. We did ,however, make at least one expensive signing around this time.

As for the crowds; i seem to remember they dipped whilst at VP and then rose when we first returned to Odsal before the slow decline set in.

The initial redevelopment was set up before the 'National Stadium' iirc, Wembley was opened in 2007 so I think the planning was probably a bit later than mid or even late 90s. The original Odsal plan was sometime around 2000, the same time as the move to VP, which as you say was to facilitate the build, though I confess to sometimes being a bit hazy about dates..

It was after the initial plan was being considered that they decided to enter the fray for the national Stadium which probably suggests the Wembley bit was added after we went to VP, though why anyone thought that a National Stadium ever going to anywhere but Wembley is unbelievable, imo.

Spot on about VP, the crowds dwindled - which considering the teams we were putting out shows just how much many people disliked the idea. If fact, to bring it up to date, the fact that crowds dropped so much at a ground within the city does make me think that Dewsbury might not have been the best idea.