The Phantom Horseman

Yep, first story now published.

Which one? There was one that disappeared on the BWV page, but that might easily have been deleted by the author, and there's another thread on the same page that's been up for a couple of days. As a fan, I'm concerned about our financial situation, as a lot of us will be, the club was fairly open about it at the fans' forum earlier this year. But I don't really want the club to publicise every negative financial situation it might find itself in, I don't see any upside in that and plenty of downside.

Again - where has the club tried to suppress information? It's my view that you should address that situation, rather than allow rumours etc to be spread...

I think your odds that you put on the general forum were about right. I can guarantee that we know more about what our realistic chances are tonight (and the likely make-up of our team) than the guys coming up with the line on second-tier RL.

Out of interest, where has the club tried to suppress information? If the club is struggling to pay bills at the moment, I'm not sure that going public with that would be net beneficial - it would immediately lead to a string of negative stories by the RL journalists (as others have said, I'm surprised this thread hasn't alerted them, though there's still time), that's not going to help in terms of attracting sponsors etc.

Given the team we're going to be putting out, I think this would be our best/most unlikely win of at least the last 10 years if we somehow pulled it off.

Bradford have opened up 1-5 with Betfred, but I don't think that will last long when the teams are announced.

Having heard Paul Cooke's pre-game interview, I'm starting to think your friend was right.

I understand that. I'm just asking for an explanation for a cryptic post.

Can you clarify this - are you saying Paul Rowley is going to take over from Sean Long at Oldham?

If we had Reynolds and Hampshire, I'd be cautiously optimistic about turning Bradford over, because I think they're both miles better than any of Bradford's halves. It's no coincidence that we looked awful earlier in the season (second bottom in the table) when Reynolds was injured and before Hampshire was fit, and it's also no coincidence our season turned when we got those two playing together. I take your point about Bradford self-destructing through errors and ill-discipline but we don't have the firepower to take advantage without any half backs.

Magnificent!

Regarding the squad comments in the above article, I don't think there's any chance that Paul Cooke would try to put Hardcastle in the squad or play him if he knew he was ineligible to play. There's a suggestion that he didn't actually fail the HIA but perhaps just wasn't ready to return within the designated 15-minute period - it's entirely possible that he passed the HIA even though he didn't return. Of course, he might still not make the 17 on Friday.

Not that I disagree with your overall prediction, but firstly, it's not irrelevant to the two clubs concerned, and secondly, I'm surprised to see such disrespect creeping in when we're into the knockout stage.

I am sure Fev will have a dig again, but we had loads of good ball last week and without half backs on a narrow pitch it's hard to see how we can score enough points to be competitive over 80 minutes. You also have to look at the line-ups - Fev can only name 19 (and there may be doubts about 1 or 2 of them) with no halves and a hooker who will have to play 80 minutes for the second time in five days, whereas Bradford are likely to bring in 6 of their bigger names (Blake, Taufua, Lawrence, Lilley, Hill and Gee) who had the luxury of being rested from Sunday's attritional game.

Those of us of a certain age (probably most of us on here!) will have spotted the typo in the CC final year, of course.

Assuming there are no availability issues with anyone in the squad (which might be a big assumption to make), you'd think Olpherts will come back in for Barley, and then perhaps one of Stevens, Akauola and Hardcastle will be the other player to miss out. Looking at Bradford's squad on the RFL match centre, my guess is they will go something like Hooley, Okunbor, Blake, Gill, Taufua, Holmes, Keyes, Lawrence, Lilley, Hill, Fulton, Gee, Hallas with Scurr, Souter, Musgrove and Michael on the bench. That's definitely a much stronger team than we faced on Sunday so we'll need a herculean effort.

Having said all that...the post on the FB page specifically says to cast the vote on the club's X page (where there is a poll). It's not going to matter though as option 4 is the runaway leader on both platforms.

I'll say one thing that I don't think many will disagree with: our in-season signings this year (Hampshire, Wilde and Glover) have been a lot better than last season (Eden, Patton, Kibula etc).

Nah I don't agree with that at all. How do you organise a vote on the official website, there's no way for users to comment on there, and my guess is there are a lot more Fev fans look at the club FB page regularly than the website anyway. There are already loads of votes on the club Facebook page (well over 200 already and it's only been up about 3 hours), they are going to get a pretty good sample of Rovers fans, personally I think it's a great idea as it will give them a good idea of which option is likely to sell best. As an aside, the green shirt was as far as I'm aware paid for by our sponsors Bartercard (whose brand colour is green), it was a fundraising thing that cost the club nothing and any shirts sold raised money for the club, so probably a no-brainer for the club to accept the offer. If it helps get them on board again next year and bring some much-needed funds into the club, they can bring out a pink one as far as I'm concerned.

Tell you what - as a one time only special offer, I haven't voted yet, tell me which one you like best and I'll vote for it for you.

I think the answer to that is probably that you can't, because it's difficult to hold a vote on something of this nature in an effective and timely manner other than on that type of social media.

I don't know what Jubby does for a living but I'd be amazed if a player missed a Friday night play-off game because of work commitments.

Can you source this, because the only person I've seen suggest that is Mick Gledhill?