I haven't come on here this season for obvious reasons but upon hearing the news this morning my heart dropped. I hope you can get yourselves out of this mess, Super League wouldn't be the same without Bradford Bulls in it.

Good luck from all at Cas.

ESCROW, ESCROW, ESCROW!

Thanks, I needed a laugh!

Lool, NP, Dude.

I'm literally putting everything I can into this cause.

Mr Bennetts R8 would put a dent in the 500k figure.

It does appear as though Hood and the directors are holding a gun to the loyal supporters heads. Pledge £100 to save the club that means so much to you from the mess that we have put the club in and we can carry on. What are the ramifications for the directors if you save the club? Its a dreadful position to be put in.
The directors have to be put in the position where they are forced to answer all the awkward questions that you want answered. Give a full and frank detail of the club's finances.
Good Luck!

depressed!!!!

to pledge or not to pledge?

not pledging = folding

pleding = giving hood et al more money

because the RFL own the ground they could open up the franchise to another operator couldnt they????
would love to hear an RFL statement on all of this!


or are we just trying to scare the bank into letting us have an overdraft.

Hood has eroded any trust i may have had for him and his cronies. He was dealt a crap hand by CAisley, but has gambled and lost and the stake was our club. we reformed in 1963-4 and eventually became winners again.
one thing i dont want is any suggestion thst the RFL or Bradford MDC bail us out. start afresh, in Bradford, and live to our means!

Run by the fans, for the fans.

Franking 11000 letters first class would have cost over 5k for the mailshot that is even before envelopes and paper/ink.

Wouldn't happen.

I can't help feeling that Mr Hood has decided heart-strings are linked to purse-strings and then the whole exercise seems a little cynical all of a sudden...

Could well happen.

Really sorry to hear about all this. As a lifelong Trinity supporter I know the pain you are feeling at the moment. It's a tough call as to whether to try and save the club as it is or wait for the inevitable and reform and regroup. Every situation is different. We did the latter and it's worked for us but the pain of those few weeks was really horrible. I do NOT want to see other clubs circling to pick over the bones like they did with us - no team in our RL community should do that and it took Tony Smith over at Warrington to remind everyone of that just over a year ago. Let's not see it happen again.

All I can say is that you have my suuport and I'm sure that goes for a lot of other Trinity fans as well.

Anyone unsure whether to pledge or not – go look at the Leeds Rhinos message board and see what most of them are saying.

If we go into administration the vultures come in and take our best young talent. I would gladly pay £100 to not have to see koppy in a Leeds shirt next season!

Imagine if we can raise the money and stay competitive, what message would that send to the rest of super league – we are a massive a club with loyal supporters!

If we go bust and have to rebuild we lose our best players and possibly end up in the championship.

I’ll probably pledge £50, buy this seasons home shirt and pay in to the leeds game(rather than using my season ticket). At least that way it seems like I am getting something for my £100.

But you forgot to mention that they're in exactly the same style and with the same marketing prose, tinged as ever with the aim of inciting guilt, that has been used throughout. No sense of shame it appears amongst our board. We the fans should feel guilt in case by not pledging we deprive our kids of the opportunity to watch the Bulls at Odsal. Similarly given the 'pledge' tactic is evoked once more, perhaps it might be worth looking at the economics of the cheap season ticket deal and previous pledges.

I don't think the choice is as stark as the Board are suggesting - pay up or fold, they've had time to prepare this and the letters evidence that, which means they've been disingenuous with the fan base and see us as a soft touch. If they've had time to plan this 'quest for survival' I would rather they had put it in to setting out the terms of a share issue through which we might change the structure of the club and clarify ownership.

Firstly, I would hate to see the Bulls or any other team go out of business, it is not good for the cause of RL in general for this to happen.

Secondly, if there is to be a revival of the current club, I think it is wholly unrealistic for the club to come cap in hand to the fans. As has been pointed out, this is a privately owned business, if the current owners want to approach the fans for funding they must surely have to be prepared to give up shares in exchange for funds. This would give the Fans both a share in the benefits any revival might bring but also some visibility of the real situation and a say in how the club / company is run going forward.

I hope that the Bulls can emerge form this current crisis, strengthen and move forward. But I think it is a massive ask.

Good Luck

Pledge away, but you have no guarantee that this won't happen anyway and I would argue that with this Board the chances are we will be in the same situation sooner rather than later. This is the chance to make a change, Hood thinks we're too gullible. I'm not sure sticking with what we've got - a Board who have made public statements at odds with the position they now hold and a team that will once again struggle to make the play-offs is a good prospect, but then fear of change is always a barrier, particularly when some marketeer is increasing the club's deficit sending out begging letters which involve making the recipients feel guilty.

Plenty getting behind us.

Head to twitter lets get #savethebulls trending.

Robbie Paul has pledged.

Chris Bridge says SL needs Bulls

Always a shame to see this happen and has a longtime supporter of the Keighley cougars I've seen it happen a few times. Only 2 ways out of this situation that I can see.

1. Someone with £1000.000 buys the club and takes over completely.
2. You go bust and form a new company and play in championship 1

Hope for you bulls supporters that it's option 1 but with the economic climate how it is asking all supporters to cough up £100 to save the club is never gonna work.

Good luck hope it works out!

hood's pre season predicition of pushing the top 4 this season doesnt look very promising does it? we aint even going to make to easter! he has made a laughing stock of our once great club

I for one wouldn't mind some of your better players wearing a Rhinos shirt, if Leeds were in the mess that you are i am sure this message board would be saying similar. At this time though rather than any of your players I'd rather have financially viable and competitive Bradford Bulls team.

Good Luck from all at the Giants, I hope everything turns out ok for you guys.
Super League and Rugby League would not be the same without a team like Bradford.

Fielden and Burgess.

both sacrificed to pay debt and we are still where we are now.

fold, start afresh, with a club, not a company, a club, full of people who want to be in it, and are hungry for success! Yes results will be poor, but we will know why. If we are a community club, run by the fans for the fans, we can unite behind one goal.

if we can get 4000 fans buying a £200 season ticket each next season thats a budget of 800K without any sponsorship or sky money. use this to pay a new playing squad. It will be less than we pay now, and of a lower quality, but it will be within our limited means.

800k = 15k per week on players. I know players in Champ 2 that are on £50 a week!!!!

our future may not be in SL, but it will be ours!!!

we could build from a solid base. give our younsgsters a chance to play 1st team for us, not be kept out of a side by a high earning failure! if we drop out now, we'd lose the franchise and would probably miss out again in 2015, but by 2018 we could be viably be ready for SL again and be carrying no debt, with a clean slate and a board of supporters who are not out to be self glorifying.



or we can pledge to Hood and his cronies and be back where we are now in six months time, or a year, or next month.

In my opinion, the RFL should offer a 'Soft Loan' for the £1million on the condition that the current board relinquish power to the RFL, who could be themselves or appoint a consultancy company to put the house back in order (which will probably mean losing players) and find a new buyer to start again next year. Almost like administration but I think administrators would just asset strip without the regard the RFL would.

I wouldn't pledge if Leeds were in similar circumstances, but that's mainly because sport (as much as I enjoy it) isn't that much of a priority in my life. I might consider it if I could see it was part of a sustainable plan to keep the team viable, but I'm not convinced that option is being offered to Bradford fans at the moment.

SL needs a strong Bradford team (i.e. the Bulls pre-200icon_cool.gif, not another team like Salford/Wakey/Cas that might cause the odd upset but are routinely uncompetitive with the top teams. Building up from the grassroots, much like what happened in 1996, might be a better solution to getting the better sort of team rather than trying to soldier on with the current management set-up.

I think some kind of sweeping change will be necessary to attract the kind of investment needed to take the Bulls back to the top. Hood and co. have done their best to attract a big money backer without success. Who knows, a truly revitalised Bulls brand may even convince the likes of Ken Morrison to get involved or buy-out the likes of Caisley who appears to be working against the current administration.

Why would the RFL do that??? Like any other investor, they can wait for the club to go under, have it's debts written off and form a new phoenix company if they wish to own and runs the Bulls... which they don't.