Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 10:58 am  

Norman Bates wrote:

Nigel Wood's one man campaign to destroy 'Fax, starting with naming us the Blue Sox, I rest my case.

That pitiful nickname did more harm to our club than most people realise. At the time i had a right old rant about it (think DR) but to no avail. It was 'only a nickname and marketing tool but was disastrous. If anyone with half a brain had thought up something worse to market a rugby league club they couldn't picked owt as bad. It made us literally, and quite rightly, a laughing stock.

Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 11:03 am  

He didn't want a nickname that some people wouldn't like so he picked one nobody liked.

Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 11:16 am  

Alan wrote:

Can't see Catalans going down. The machinations to keep them in are gathering pace. Firstly we have Bird's ridiculous reduction of suspension, next there will be a glut of Widnes/Leigh/London players up before the Disciplinary, and what odds Tony Gigot appealing successfully, yet again, against his two year ban?

Not that I'm biased or easily lead to believe in conspiracy theories or anything but fully agree and I have to have something to blame the French for apart from our nil pois.

Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 12:51 pm  

faxcar wrote:

Not that I'm biased or easily lead to believe in conspiracy theories or anything but fully agree and I have to have something to blame the French for apart from our nil pois.

Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 8:50 pm  

mr t hall wrote:

He didn't want a nickname that some people wouldn't like so he picked one nobody liked.

Indeed but I do believe he had an excellent fact finding mission to the USA before it, or was it a fat finding mission? Who knows, it was all bollox if you ask me.

Re: next years Championship : Mon Sep 11, 2017 9:40 pm  

Norman Bates wrote:

Indeed but I do believe he had an excellent fact finding mission to the USA before it, or was it a fat finding mission? Who knows, it was all bollox if you ask me.

It could have been worse. if he'd gone to Canada we might have finished up as Halifax Dock Leaves

Re: next years Championship : Tue Sep 12, 2017 7:55 am  

IIRC The suggestion was that we should be called Halifax Bombers this was obviously non pc hence the ridiculous Blue Sox moniker making us a laughing stock

Re: next years Championship : Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:17 am  

I am going to be controversial here, but I don’t think the Bluesox name was as bad as people make out. I think we use it as an excuse for everything else that went wrong with the club. Yes we had the odd joke thrown our way (but so does Bulls**t, the Whinos, the Worriers), but the thing about the name was everybody knew which team it belonged to and that was the idea behind it. Most fans actually took to it, we could chant the name, more than most clubs did with theirs. The fact that commentators still (accidentally) refer to us as the Bluesox so many years after we got rid probably tells you that it was actually quite a strong brand. Had we been successful on the field then I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t have had such an issue with it (we certainly didn’t in 1998 when we finished 3rd) and it wasn’t the name that caused our demise, moving from Thrum Hall was the main catalyst for this.

Re: next years Championship : Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:41 am  

bentleyman wrote:

IIRC The suggestion was that we should be called Halifax Bombers this was obviously non pc hence the ridiculous Blue Sox moniker making us a laughing stock

It was said Bombers might upset the Germans. A) who are they? and B)Who cares anyway?

Re: next years Championship : Tue Sep 12, 2017 10:55 am  

gizempo wrote:

I am going to be controversial here, but I don’t think the Bluesox name was as bad as people make out. I think we use it as an excuse for everything else that went wrong with the club. Yes we had the odd joke thrown our way (but so does Bulls**t, the Whinos, the Worriers), but the thing about the name was everybody knew which team it belonged to and that was the idea behind it. Most fans actually took to it, we could chant the name, more than most clubs did with theirs. The fact that commentators still (accidentally) refer to us as the Bluesox so many years after we got rid probably tells you that it was actually quite a strong brand. Had we been successful on the field then I’m pretty certain we wouldn’t have had such an issue with it (we certainly didn’t in 1998 when we finished 3rd) and it wasn’t the name that caused our demise, moving from Thrum Hall was the main catalyst for this.

I agree with that. It also the same idea that Bradford took half of our fans that also bores me to tears. At the same time if Bradford did steal any of our fans we had the same resources as them so we would have nobody to blame but ourselves if that did happen to be true. Crowds were already dropping even when we did finish 3rd and have steadily declined since despite us having some success. It probably does not help that as good a stadium we are lucky to play in, it is an absolutely awful ground for atmosphere unless it is at least half full which at the moment there is no danger of.