There's nothing wrong with being "aspirational" provided there is also a sense of realism.

I don't see us as much different from Dewsbury. We're no different from any championship club in that, given the chance we'd love to get to the top flight but that "chance" is really just a dream. For sure, as a 'big city club', you'd expect our name to be bandied about but, as we all know, we've been hanging on for that big investor to pop his or her head around the door for years and that person seems to have got lost. Like many I've stopped believing now - though I confess the investor dream lasted longer than Santa Claus.

Don't suppose the guy tht dropped £105m on the Euro Lottery is a closet Bulls fan?

Don't start trying to get my hopes up again - they've been dashed too often already...

Nestegg?

It's in the past now, but when we were averaging 8k crowds towards the end with a salary cap of £1.8m but TV income of £1.2m, we seemed to be making a loss of about £1/2m per year if the first admin accounts were to be believed. We were relegated the year before the new TV contract came in which increased the TV money to £1.8m per year. It's likely we could survive on that. But need money to get in there, which we don't have.

Oh yeah!

Of course, we were living Chris Caisley's dream back then. The board spent the 'Odsal settlement' money on buying players for the first team (it was really intended for ground repairs etc after the club took on that responsibility from the council) and that is where the £ half million per year losses came from. CC clearly believed that the better the team was the more fans would come flocking into Odsal. To some extent that was true but the 15/16K we were getting was always going to be the most we were likely to get. I can still remember CC's statements to the T&A berating fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. Seeds were sown, cloth was cut etc, we are where we are.

Don't want to be a CC apologist but I'm sure if he had realised the ground wouldn't be developed (thanks Morrisons) he would have left things as they were and settled for the income from the 15k crowds.

Good summary Bulliac, it should be put up as a sticky for all to see, including new forum members and our new owners. Because even in the good times the chairman was berating the fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. so no surprise, as soon as the current owners start saying that it is the first snowflake of the blizzard approaching.

Good summary Bulliac, it should be put up as a sticky for all to see, including new forum members and our new owners. Because even in the good times the chairman was berating the fans for not turning up in even bigger numbers. so no surprise, as soon as the current owners start saying that it is the first snowflake of the blizzard approaching.

Caisley's view was that we had morphed into a brand bigger than the city of Bradford and that crowds could therefore continue to grow. He was to a degree correct in that we hoovered up fans from Halifax, Huddersfield, Dewsbury etc. I know a lot of people who have cherished memories of watching us win things but have since tootled back to watching Huddersfield as it's their home town club. I've never felt the potential of core support from the city itself is much greater than 10k.