orangeman wrote:
"Very"?
He's butchered the club to within an inch of oblivion.
True. I am mean look at the amount of regular posters that came on here 10, 15, 20 years ago and you have to ask the question why they do not anymore. Gus in my view was the beginning of the end.
Paddock Punter (Nigel), one of the most dedicated of London RL supporters, Gus rubbed him up the wrong way, and it ended up after PP being at every game since the Fulham days, stopped. And it was not only him, a whole load of harden supporters got very pi**ed off with how the existing supporter base were being communicated to, and treated.
I agree with Gutters, the 2006 and 2007 seasons were the best days in terms of trying to build something special. We had a really good team that could beat, and did beat everyone on their day. We had optimism that the bad days were behind us and the best days were ahead. Yes there were grumbles, but the results and the attendances at the Stoop spoke for themselves, I remember the last day of the 2006 season against Salford when we had a +5K crowd. The crowd atmosphere was amazing.
I went to Australia and came back to the UK during the 2011 season, I took my dad along to a home game, The Stoop was dead (Sub 2k crowd), the team was bottom of the SL, the guys that used to come to the games were not there as Gus was a Pen15. Everybody was just downbeat, resigned, and the feeling with the Broncos fanbase was toxic.
Back to topic, if IMG wants to grow the game here, then I would suggest that they grab a copy of the Pastel Revolution book which describes the story of how Broncos became Quins, and how Lenaghen and team wanted to build something special.
For IMG to do this it will take time, but more importantly words are cheap and regardless of how much money they have to pump in (it will be a lot), the money will be pi**ed down the toilet without the plan and how you are going to execute it.
Any thats my annual rant.