Well indeed. People involved in professional sport are generally pretty dodgy. The fact that Marc appears to be generally trustworthy, broadly open, and is not promising anything unrealistic, puts him a cut above the usual rabble. That doesn't mean I think he will be able to lead us to greatness, and given the millstone that is Odsal that is round our necks, I still think it's fairly likely that we will go out of existence in the next few years. I do however trust that Marc will do a good job with what he has at his disposal and will perform with integrity. I don't think there's much more we can ask, beyond someone with the same qualities but more money.

I honestly can't see where Marc is supposed to be blaming the fans. All he is doing is pointing out the obvious; this is a business where the majority of income comes from the fans. Without the fans providing that income the business cannot survive with its current expenditure.

Regarding players, he has answered a question people have been debating all season; who had the final say on recruitment? Apparently Jimmy did and turned down players who would have been very useful to the team. I think the fact that there has been a sharp improvement in the quality of recruits filling the change of coach, despite Ferres still being in place, pretty much backs this up.

I don't often go on about what I do for a living but this could all have been sorted with some pretty simple crisis management principles. Any written statement or piece to the camera following a negative incident can be dealt with as follows -

PITY - I feel desperately sorry that we didn't make the play offs. Everyone is bitterly disappointed. We just didn't perform on the day and credit to Featherstone who did.

PRAISE - I'd like to thank the supporters for following us in such big numbers. Your contribution is huge. Nothing would be possible without you. Players and directors come and go but supporters stay true through thick and thin as you have demonstrated these past few seasons.

PROMISE - I promise the club as a whole will learn lessons from this and be better. We will be fully professional next year and I promise as Chairman that we will be doing everything we can to improve on this year's performances.

You can write statements like this in advance for all kinds of scenario. I've done it many times. It provides a comment which is so important in this day and age. Leaving a communication vacuum is the worst thing you can do. Rumours develop and fill it. Before you know it a poopstorm has developed needlessly. People love to speculate - just look at the news - most of it is speculation. Social media adds another dimension. You can head a lot of it off with some decent prepared statements that can buy you time.

Damn. You must have to say sorry a lot.

PITY - I'm sorry you are not satisfied.
PRAISE - You were ace though. It's not you, it's me.
PROMISE - I'll go see the doctor tomorrow.


Hey, this works. Mind if I nick it?

Feel free.

It comes with the territory



If you listen to the news you'll hear every chief exec or senior person use this formula when answering questions. Questioners try to put them off their stride by asking the whys and wherefores and you then hear the person reply by saying "First can I say how sorry I am...."

Then they go into the rest of it and repeat until end of interview.

This is a brilliant blog and an extremely good read summarising Sunday to today (I think)

[urlhttp://wobblyheadedbull.tumblr.com/post/148015837798/dont-look-back-in-anger[/url

What you think?

See that's all it would have taken.

If anyone from the club is reading I can do all this for you ready for the next big disaster so this fallout doesn't happen again. Free of charge.

I've followed this guy on twitter for a while now. I don't think he uses this forum though. But yeah he's been doing that blog ever since we were relegated (I think) and it's always a great read. I've seen a few RL journalists mentioning it on twitter today so I'm pleased for him.

I've also read the blog since he started it, and I agree, it's an excellent read almost every time.

Russ who writes it tends to have a very good knack at summing up exactly how you feel about a situation, often with plenty of humour injected in there to make it entertaining as well as emotive. I may not agree with every point he makes (and nor should anyone), but I tend to find I agree with most of them.

Brilliant piece on Sunday's game. Sums it up perfectly. Somebody buy that lad a beer.

I too remember that scrum. It did truly say it all we needed to know.

If only you had been asked to write the statement (rather than having to plough through Marc Green's 'diatribe')

I think every player who turned out for us on Sunday should be made to read that...

Yes, "diatribe", it was a strange choice of words from Ross and wholly pejorative in that context. So much so that I can't help but wonder what lay behind the use of it.

If the statement had, in any shape or form, actually been a 'diatribe, then it would have been fair comment, but it wasn't. Not even close. If Marc had taken longer over it and thought about it a wee bit morer he might have changed the tone, if not the message, but it was no diatribe. There seems to be some friction there, which helps neither the Bulls nor the T&A, imo.

There's been friction for a while between Ross and the club. I guess it was born out of the breakdown in the relationship between Ross and Lowes. I suspect the club supported Lowes during these times and it's coloured Ross's attitude a bit. I'd have hoped things would smooth over after Lowes went.

I agree that "diatribe" was an odd word to use. Either Ross has an axe to grind (in which case he needs to wind his neck in) or he doesn't know the meaning of the word.

In which case he should wind his neck in. Ross, wind your neck in!

A good read. The scrum thing though....In last season's game at The Shay the same thing happened. O.K. that time there were only seconds left but you were only one score adrift and the lack of effort to form the scrum was unbelievable. If it had been Fax I would have been disgusted with the players. Summat not right that's for sure.

You're trying to do sarcasm, I know, but you make a valid point. It is the point I made at the start of our Championship adventure. It's this: you first pick your coach, who is your No.1 decision. Then with him, put a squad together, with the key positions well filled; you then spend a couple of seasons cementing the team. If you are lucky, and chose well, by then you have the makings of a good team. Over the next few years, if you are very lucky, it may become a formidable team.

And that was our first problem. Zero time. Instant success needed. Nearly happened but fell short.

Second problem - we've now had a couple of years of team cementing, but sadly the coach didn't work out, and we didn't bother with the "fill key positions" stage. So we have in many respects to start over. But we don't have 2 or 3 years to become good. We can't afford to park it, but there's no avoiding the fact that the team needs time to gel and get to know each other.

You sound upset that the new players need time to play together, but I think you know it's true! Or do you disagree?

But I don't know what you want me to say, or what you expect? Do you want to severely punish the players and sack everyone else? How will that help? So yes, we've had our moan, park it now, time is short and the task is huge, imho we need to get on with it.

We have a good scrum half now. He's got the rest of this season, a full preseason and hopefully this time next year everyone will be ready

Agreed. We could have had the biggest meanest fowards and the quickest outside backs in the game, wouldn't have made a difference without a 7 to get the team around the park.

We finally have a spine and a good one at that. Moss, Pryce, Chisholm, O'brien is a great combination to build the team around.

Also think we're due a bit of luck as our HBs have all been crocked last 3 years.

Agree. great reading as I read all of wobbly's blogs about the bulls.

when does Ross ever post anything positive about the bulls? I used to watch bulls TV with his interviews with jimmy and just think this is cringe worthy viewing.

The interviews with Jimmy were all down to Jimmy. I spoke to one of the other blokes involved with those interviews a little while ago (not Ross or Hobbo who asked most of the questions) and that person said Jimmy was a total nightmare and he felt like the poor blokes asking the questions had been given an impossible task.

As far as Ross and positivity goes, I've spoken before about this. The idea he's positive or negative is total rubbish IMO. He reports what's there, regardless of which side of the fence it's fallen on. The story this week regarding Green having a few things to think about is essentially a collection of things everyone on here was saying too. He doesn't work for the club, so why should he be more positive than us fans on here? I generally think the tone of his pieces are very (VERY) similar to the general feeling amongst fans. If things were going well and everyone was loving the club, I expect his articles would be along a similar lines. When the club is doing well and his articles are still negative, I'll accept it's him. Until then, I think he gets a crap ride from a lot people.

Everyone praises Russ (Wobbly) for telling it like it is. But people criticise Ross for similar. Yeah I know he's a professional journalist, but I'd rather read the T&A being honest and forthright than kissing the backside of Marc Green and the club.