This was my train of thought...

Its been a prolonged run of dour displays and I wondered when/if it would begin to tell...

Have to say that I'm not as up beat as most on here.

We have lost out head of youth, our best upcoming youngster and Ethan Ryan and my suspicion is all three are down to lack of funds.

We lost Damian Irvine to Bradford PA and he immediately secures new sponsorship for them - with their owner (who WAS interested in Bulls) setting a budget of £1.4 million for a team!

We end up with Chalmers - no pot to pea in, Duffy and RHP - with Nigel Wood in the background for some reason...

Why did Damian Irving move to Bradford PA from us?

Just find the back office stuff depressing - but hey ho - glass half empty and all that.

Oh, and yes, the style of play? Doesn't bring feet through the gate - which adds to the financial problem bit.....

It was quiet on the terraces because the club allowed supporters to go and sit in the stand at no additional cost. The stand was far busier than normal.

The low crowd I think was down to the weather (which bizarrely turned out brilliant once we kicked off) and the dour rugby recently. It’s shame we didn’t kick on from the Leeds game a bit more but I suppose the games have still been close. I enjoyed yesterday's game though, even despite the efforts of the bloke behind me that moaned non stop for 80mins.

Loss of JB and Ethan is a blow but neither was going to stay forever and we’ve had very good service out of them. On Irvine that’s a loss but the back office has been pretty poor since 2017 including while he was in it. Fact is with Chalmers in charge I think we’re pretty much stuck where we are. Whoever is covering the losses better keep doing it (Big Nige?) because Chalmers can’t.

What the club needs is some new blood in the marketing and office management setup. It appears we pay peanuts so might struggle to attract more capable people and so the same folk keep popping up or carrying on as they have for years.

If there was over 3k there yesterday then I’m Ernest Ward.

No you're not Ernest Ward - there was 2700 (ish) there - but they bull it up to save face!

Agreed. Our last few games of the season are all very winnable. So if we can keep within touching distance of the top 5, with the likes of Evans, Jy & Keyes back we could sneak in that top 5 and then anything could happen.

Unfortunately I couldn't go yesterday but I saw a highlight of DFJ's try (think it may have been his 2nd) where Ryan passes to Oakes onto DFJ. The centre play from Oakes is absolutely class. He barely touched the ball and provided an accurate pass for his wingman. It had to be bang on and that quick for of a pass for DFJ to score. Superb centre play.

Oakes is a very classy player, he's impressed me from the very first game I saw him play. A proper winger's centre, that's three tries in recent weeks he's been instrumental in - the great try Milnes scored against Fax was thanks to his quick hands and two more again yesterday.

3,414 the crowd, which just beat ours at 3,361. Get down to LSV next week where it will be considerably warmer and see if we can get over 5,000 on!!

Also need to note that next seasons central funding allocation is based on this years final position table - the lower we finish the less funding we receive.

As far as I can see - we need to increase attendances and finish in the top 5 to remain sustainable with the current setup we have.

Not an easy task!

They are supposed to be normalising the funding distributions so that final league standing doesn't make that much of a difference anymore. Every club should get the same split imo regardless of where you finish. Stop encouraging a boom or bust scenario.

Hardly think the opinion of a fan is going to change or encourage anything within the Bulls "management team".

However, I would hazard a guess that Chalmers will have a good idea of how next years funding will be distributed.

As for a fair distribution between the clubs - not sure if that has happened to date - its usually a results based reward.

I don't expect us to be pushing Toronto (ha ha!) - but 5th might be achievable and if I am proved correct - will help fill the coffers for next year.