Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Tue Dec 20, 2022 8:46 pm  

BigTime wrote:

jbuzza wrote:

BigTime wrote:

Did you know we are playing two games at Ebbs fleet again?

I didn't see this indicated when the club were pushing memberships.

Cant remember to be honest but it’s not great is it 5 home games between start of season and end of July - assuming the trains aren’t still be on strike and one can face turning up to see the hiding Fev will probably hand out. Basically every football off season we can’t use the ground. Balls!

Less than one home game a month

Thats not how you grow a crowd......

Its getting to the point that the Aussies will tour Eng more than we will have home games at PL

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Tue Dec 20, 2022 11:34 pm  

BigTime wrote:

.....Were we on glue when we signed off on this move?

Yup.....UHU-ghes!

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Thu Dec 22, 2022 12:07 am  

F.F.S.
I am genuinely in awe at the level of ineptitude/deceit on display from the club. Not only does it now appear that we're banned from Plough Lane for 2 Months every year, but that the club have falsely sold memberships without announcing that 2 of the games will be OTR 30 miles across town and an hour by car or longer by public transport.

I expect that the handful of memberships sold have been to those blind faithful who will never question Hughes and Loubser (but who went missing when asked to volunteer last year???), so there'll be no complaints, but it really is an underhanded move by an organisation that is anything but organised!

It also beggars the question as to why we left a perfectly suitable ground for our needs when there's no intent what so ever to try and gain promotion or attract gates of 5,000.

To be crystal. We now have fewer fans, fewer sponsors and fewer "home" games than we did at Trailfinders whilst the commericla revenue would seem to be far less and seem to be hanging our hat on IMG giving us a "leg up"

26 games to the 5,000 target! I wonder what will happen at the end of 2024 when we have 600 fans rattling around plough lane?

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Thu Dec 22, 2022 10:36 am  

I’m pinning my hopes on a decent start to the season before we go into hibernation for months.

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:09 pm  

BigTime wrote:

BigTime wrote:

I’m pinning my hopes on a decent start to the season before we go into hibernation for months.

Hopefully the assistant coaches and the rest of the squad will be announced very soon.

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Wed Dec 28, 2022 7:27 pm  

jbuzza wrote:

jbuzza wrote:

Hopefully the assistant coaches and the rest of the squad will be announced very soon.

I admire your optimism, Buzz & hope you're right.

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Wed Dec 28, 2022 8:10 pm  

Deadcowboys1 wrote:

Deadcowboys1 wrote:

I admire your optimism, Buzz & hope you're right.

To be fair we have signed 4 new players taking us to a couple over the 17 required for match day. Job done surely?

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Wed Dec 28, 2022 9:47 pm  

Quite a few gone through the out door on the quiet. Almost as many as the year before. Whilst I agree our squad became a little bloated we are way too thin now.
All of the 2021 group of academy promotees has now gone (if as I assume Oakley has not been retained).
All but 2 of the Skolars players also gone - that worked out pretty much as predicted.
Curran appears to have gone,
Ramsey never really got a go - wasn’t he badged along with Coates as a project player-? -that didn’t work out either.
Late additions Gahan and Pelligra also gone and Tuilatu and seemingly Situ.
I assume we will sign some more before the season begins because as it stands we won’t even be in the position we were in last year of being able to bring in below par replacements for the first few games when 1st team players picked up inevitable knocks.

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Thu Dec 29, 2022 12:59 am  

Currently looks like 17 players if you assume all those under 21 aren't match day picks unless we are really short. But even that 17 is too weighted towards the backs, although I'm assuming Natoli will be a starting centre (primarily as we are so short there once again). The obvious gaps at the moment are centre and second row, I think there is a starting position open for one each in those positions.

Since Rugby League seems very much a seventeen man game, I think currently we can carry no more than one injury. We were told to expect the signings by Christmas; just not sure which Christmas.

I guess we may get a couple of loans. But I think only Sam Davis helped last season. Others weren't good enough (I was totally unimpressed by Ferreira) or too short term.

Feels like the starting 17 are mid table competitive. But that's it. But those 17 won't be available every week, so the current squad is going to be worse than that.

My positive view is if we bring in 3 or 4 first 13 standard players then the overall squad looks pretty good and could attack the final play-off spot. A couple of quality season long loans plus a couple of Australian/Pacific players then maybe. That's a lot to find (at that level) at this late stage.

Realistically I fear something similar to last season as we struggle early and resolve some of the issues half way through.

Re: We Are Moving to the East Stand ! : Thu Dec 29, 2022 1:45 pm  

Smithers99 wrote:

Smithers99 wrote:

Currently looks like 17 players if you assume all those under 21 aren't match day picks unless we are really short. But even that 17 is too weighted towards the backs, although I'm assuming Natoli will be a starting centre (primarily as we are so short there once again). The obvious gaps at the moment are centre and second row, I think there is a starting position open for one each in those positions.

Since Rugby League seems very much a seventeen man game, I think currently we can carry no more than one injury. We were told to expect the signings by Christmas; just not sure which Christmas.

I guess we may get a couple of loans. But I think only Sam Davis helped last season. Others weren't good enough (I was totally unimpressed by Ferreira) or too short term.

Feels like the starting 17 are mid table competitive. But that's it. But those 17 won't be available every week, so the current squad is going to be worse than that.

My positive view is if we bring in 3 or 4 first 13 standard players then the overall squad looks pretty good and could attack the final play-off spot. A couple of quality season long loans plus a couple of Australian/Pacific players then maybe. That's a lot to find (at that level) at this late stage.

Realistically I fear something similar to last season as we struggle early and resolve some of the issues half way through.

As it stands, one month out, difficult not to see that it will be another challenging year. As is, bottom 4 seems realistic. I hope we spread the wins out a bit though - may assist morale and gate receipts. We also are unlikely to be able to default to Skolars when we run thin on numbers as we’ve kind of shown our hand there - many went straight back - difficult to think they would have given glowing reports even should the players be of “the standard”. If we don’t get our recruitment drive into second gear we may end up giving Hammersmith Hill Hoists and North Herts Crusaders a bell come March time.