Padge

I have filled in quite a few RL questionaires in my time, from the RFL, from the Wigan club and from other clubs. They don't ask every single person who is a customer though do they, RL was one of the first sports in this country to use a research company to look into the future of the sport, over 40 years ago.

Why should you be asked, supporters really do get ideas above their station. You are just a customer buying a product. I don't recall Mars asking all their customers for permission to change the name of Marathon to Snickers.

Does that include Knottingley and Normanton, assuming Pontefract is sided with Featherstone.

This is always a difficult one, how do you draw a line around a clubs catchment area, especially when you have clubs bordering each other. If someone looks up Wigan's population the headline figure you normally get is 300,000 but that figure is for Wigan Borouogh which includes Leigh, Billinge (part of ) that borders St.Helens, Golborne and Ashton that border Warrington and St.Helens, with postcodes in both camps. Where does Harlequinns constituancy stop. I doubt that you would ever really get a saisfactory answer.

July 10th 2009 It was reported that the Saints Directors had to inject

So the directors didn't have to chuck in a couple of million quid last year to ensure the project went ahead?

Salford may have just offered him more money.

What about it?

Agreed, but to often people overlook the simple things because someone else is doing it differently, they think that they must follow. The current poor form of Bradford may in the long run be a blessing in disguise, the club has a an opportunity to re-connect with its supporters, and seek out new ones, getting them to buy into the club and not into success. A far more substainable audiance can be built up by increasing crowdsduring adversity. It may seem like the most impossible task in the world at the moment but with the right people getting out the right message it can be done. Wakefield have increased crowds year on year with no success and a lot of adversity, if they can do it Bradford can.

That's what I was saying, its been done in it worked, move on. That is why I said the club needs some fresh thinking, I think the club allowed itself to stagnate by concentrating too much on want went on on the pitch without realising what had got people their in the first place had become tired and outdated. Success totally blinds a clubs management.

Lenigan at Wigan isn't spending to the cap limit, he also ruled out players (stars if you like) on big contracts being brought in in the future. He doesn't seem to see who you a sign as being an effective marketing tool, others in the past at Wigan did and for its time it worked but the salary cap changed that and Wigan couldn't adapt. The Bulls, borrowing from near neighbours Keighley but more importantly Peter Deakins studying of American sports marketing, were the front runners on marketing Super League, they had success to coincide which undoubtably helped, but they went down the put on a show route and it worked. Were Bradford bank rolled by a multi-millionaire at the time, I don't think so. Bradford at that time had a man who was to become the most influential marketing guru of that particular era and it paid off. Has Bradfords problem been that Peter Deakins success held back the club, I think it may well have. Everyone who steps into the role has big shoes to fill but is also given the job of reviving the Deakin model, Bully n all, as opposed to adapting to a different era with different needs. Have Bradford got the names and addresses of all the missing supporters from the terraces, after 15 years Bradford should have a good database of nearly everyone who has been into Odsal, are the club using this to chase up fans? Wigan have gone back to some simple poster campaigning, local stores such as Sainsbury's having a poster at the entrance, probably in exchange for a small add spot in the program a very low cost highly visual bit of product placement. You don't need to be a great marketing guru to come up with that one. Its easy to look at someone else and say well they can do it because the owner has lots of money, they have lots of money because they don't let it go easily.

People don't like it to be known how sh!t and useless their club (not team ) really is in the scale of things.

I'm beginning to smell a rat. Saints have ballsed this up somehwere. The stadium is a 60 week build, 12 months ago Saints announced they were about to announce the contractor for the build., they also said that they would have to move the first few games of the 2012 season to on the road. No problem with that so far. Working back, lets say therefore the original opening date was going to be April 2011. 60 Weeks prior work must have started to meat the build time (we'll allow a few extra weeks for just in case.) That means build start would have to have been January this year. Meanwhile Saqints have sold their ground to Taylor Wimpey for housing, Saints must have signed up foolishley to a fixed for vacation despite having no fixed finish date for the stadium (no builing contractor signed up). This left Saints with an urgent need to get the contracts signed up and delivered, a share release and a

You forgot to add, eradicate all disease, make all the poor rich, give every child a puppy dog and a never ending supply of sweets and make the sun shine every day brightly with a smiling face. What a complete waste of time.

So the people of those three towns, took a look at the clubs and thought, well they are playing sh!t rugby, they are winning nothing and going nowhere, but I'll tell you what I'm going to get myself down there to see this rich bloke they've signed. Maybe with these type of guys at the helm they understand long term strategies, they understand marketing, loss leaders and invest to impress. Maybe they are just better at running things. Since you have the access and the skills would you care to put up the precise figures for how much money these 3 have bank rolled their clubs by, could you then also publish how much money the other clubs have borrowed.

It could of course be a great benefit to Widnes by creating a buzz about the town when the 'Big RL Clubs' are in town. This buzz could rub off on the locals who then spark up more interest in the local lads.

To right mate, your never alone with a 5 book trilogy of H2G2 books

Bradford probably need a little bit of a decline in order that the club as a whole gets a reality check. A club is only as strong as its strength under adversity, when the silverware is coming in and with it supporters clubs get a false sense of security. The potential at Bradford is there, the challenge for the club now is to attract supporters back without doing it on the back of trophies. Both Warrington and Wigan have shown how a club can be resiliant and grow without silverware and in Yorkshire Huddersfield continue steady progress again without any pots to wave at the crowd. A bit of a backroom clearout is probably needed to get people in with new ideas and with a different philosophy regarding what is success. Settle for lean times and concentrate on a slow rebuild. Don't chase the fans you have recently lost they are not your future, connect with the young new fans, the recently lost willl drift back in time as things pick up. In the words of the immortal Douglas Adams "Don't Panic"

At Central Park despite the old licensing laws the bars on the ground always opened all through the game when games where on Saturday and on SUnday, they even managed to get an extension on the Sunday to allow the Sullivan bar to stay open for an hour after the game had finished. Another licensing oddity was that after the game on a Sunday, despite pubs and clubs having to wait until 7:00PM to open, the Rugby Club opened at 5:00PM after the game.

I don't care about the result, I pay for two teams to entertain me. If both teams deliver than I'm happy and the result is just a by product. I've done enough winning to last most RL fans a lifetime and beyond, its nice to let someone else to have a go at worrying about results.

The stadium will be ready at the end of 2011 not at the end of the 2011 season, there is a good few months difference.

The 3:00 v 3:30 kick off I believe tied in with local licensing laws. On a Saturday afternoon, under restricted opening hours, different areas had slightly different hours. Kick offs were timed around the pub hours. Leigh traditionally have a 3:30 ko where as Wigan was always 3:00, Saturday afternoon in Wigan pubs shut at 3:00 and in Leigh it was 3:30. When the games moved to Sunday it stayed that way as on a Sunday the pubs shut at 2:00 or 2:30 but clubs had an hours extension. Basically they didn't want to compete with the pubs and clubs Also bare in mind that many clubs had their own supporters club which made money for the club and you would want to maximize the amount of time supporters were in the bar.

The overall stats don't back it up. Teams moved their fixtures to Friday nights because by doing that they could avoid being selected for the BBC on a saturday afternoon. When games were played on Saturday the BBC could pick any game to televise, many clubs where against televised games. They wanted out of the TV contract but still wanted a cut of the money, they way they got around it was to play games on Friday nights. This meant they were available for TV if the BBC wanted to show a game on a Friday night, which they didn't, and they could have a cut of the money without having their home games televised. Sunday games came later.