steve wrote:
I have no axe to grind here - but my view is that you can trace the start of your downfall with the return to Odsal. I know you won the GF in 2005 but that was on the back of saints being decimated with injury and Bradford "bringing" in Adrian Morely...
The Morley factor was not that significant, whatever others chose to believe. What was much more significant was that the players, bit after mid-season, had a good talk to each other and decided to knuckle down, put all the disruption behind the scenes behind them, and go for it. Interestingly, the likes of Pryce credited McNamara with being instrumental in the recovery...
steve wrote:
But consider the club has spent so much money trying to bring Odsal upto scratch and maintain the standards that the books have to balance somewhere and unfortunately for you its with player strength.
I don't think that's the reason. The club has slashed costs everywhere off the field, but I don't think the playing budget has been slashed. Indeed, we are told we are spending the cap - or are budgeted to anyway - so that can't be the reason. I have posted elsewhere why I suspect certain other teams are getting far more bang for their bucks; some of those reasons are currently being addressed by the good officers of HMRC, and there is anecdotal evidence that those investigations may have opened a can of worms over areas like offshore employee benefit trusts. I also wonder whether in the old days we were able to take advantage of certain devices and opportunities that are (for whatever reason) no longer available to us. But I speculate...,
steve wrote:
You had a perfectly good solution by ground sharing that would have helped both the sporting teams in Bradford - you were able to create more of an atmosphere and as a visiting supporters we were getting used to the ground!!!
"Getting used to"?? Give over! Visiting speccies were falling away in droves in the second season. Have you forgotten the regular vitriolic threads every week about the "fascist" stewards, about the poxy stand away fans were allocated, about the segregation, about the problems in getting a pint, about pretty well everything?
Yes, you could get a better atmosphere given the dynamics of the ground, and there were plusses and minuses. I was a big proponent of the "Back to Odsal" campaign as people around at the time will know. One of the main reasons was that financially the situation at VP (including the fact that what we were paying was based on much bigger crowds than we were getting, and we were very much the poor relation losing control over most of our own destiny) looked untenable. I understood that Geoffrey Richmond told Caisley pretty forcefully that we were bound to get bigger crowds than up at Odsal cos it was a far better stadium, and the financial arrangements were based on his assumptions - but that's anecdotal.
I didn't have a lot of sympathy with the "its too far to go" brigade - indeed, it was much more convenient for me than Odsal is.
I think what has most disappointed me since is that the financial situation surrounding the ground at Odsal has proved at least equally untenable. I've never been able to get to the bottom of just why that should be so, given the Club's strong desire to return there at the time, but you have to wonder about seriously inadequate due diligence maybe coupled with significantly over-optimistic budgeting (read Caisley's Chairman's Statement in the 2003 (I think it was ) accounts for a good indication of that - it was all the fans' fault for not turning up in ever-increasing numbers. I've got my own ideas, but not for on here, although (despite what some folk choose to believe) it looks like the council relieved themselves of a bigger obligation than maybe many realised . But either way, its clear the ground is costing far more than the club expected at the time of the return to Odsal.
steve wrote:
Whilst Mcnamara is not the greatest coach he's not got the greatest squad to work with either - I just think the price you have paid to go back is too high.
See above.
