Dannyboywt wrote:
... who is to say the fans will not buy in the fans need to consider if they support the club through think and thin or are just in it for the glory. ...
Well, anyone who thinks about it for a moment will say that the fans will not buy in.
You sound just like any idiot chairman, pontificating to the fans what they need to do if they are "true supporters". You forget that this is the 21st century and people apart from a (variable but small) hardcore couldn't give a flying fart about pleas and entreaties or appeals to their conscience.
Your post reminds me of the trolls who were on here back in the day when we'd get a 20K+ crowd claiming we were all "gloryhunters". It was bollox then and it is now, the crowd was just people who thought it was worth paying the admission, if yes, they paid, and if no, they don't. You can call them gloryhunters, or wildebeest, or pomegranates, it makes no difference. They pay if they want, they don't fancy it, they keep their money in their pocket.
In 21c terms the Bulls have a relatively big potential fanbase (as has been proved) but they will only come and pay if they choose to. Not if someone gives 'ema jolly good tickng off. Not if someone appeals to their conscience. Only about 3000 or so have even been interested in "relatively thin", and if we fall even further from grace into C1 then that number will at least halve. If we start from scratch it may be even worse.
I am almost as hardcore Northern/Bulls as they come so I can offer you an insight. At the moment I will take some persuading. If my club is effectively dead then I have no appetite for some back-street part-time semi-amateur operation, even if masquerading under our proud name. there are plenty of existing clubs in the area that do just that and i can get my fix of grass roots there.
Secondly, as I have been saying for a long time, if the Bulls fall to the bottom - as may be favourite now, unless Santa is real - there will be no way back for The Club Formerly Known As Bradford. We had a brief window to try to regain SL but failed. If you think any club can start from scratch and aim for SL without a wealthy backer then you really are in dreamland.
And, no club that cuts its proverbial cloth will ever succeed. There is always a prerequisite of a wealthy backer to push things along. Those who think you can make a club run as a business and be at the top, self-sustaining, are equally deluded.
The point which clothcutters somehow miss is that the fans will never settle for just the cloth you have. In order to progress, you need to buy in much moire cloth than you have. We did, last year and this. If it had worked, then we'd get the return of SL and so would remain for the time being solvent but then you have created a whole new cloth requirement and won't succeed in SL without funding yet more cloth acquisition.
If you fail, though, that's the problem. WE COULD NEVER have got to SL clothcutting, we set our stall out, and effectively bet the ranch. To get to SL you have to pay more than can possibly be justified for a Championship side. You can't guarantee promotion though, but you CAN guarantee that if you cut your cloth based on where you are, then you can forget all about that chance of promotion. THAT is the is the very simple and inescapable fact.