Quote SmokeyTA="SmokeyTA"No, in relative terms Wakefield had a poor season, relative to half the league Wakefield had a poor year. What you are doing now is what I am talking about, it is small time thinking and its what makes small time clubs.'"
No I'm not - I'm just being realistic; in your obtuse world, every team in SL had a poor season relative to the teams that finished above them. In the real world, Wakefield had a decent season relative to their previous season, which is a more satisfactory benchmark. I don't think we're at the point yet of using Wigan or Warrington as our statistical neighbour; that will come later.
Quote SmokeyTABut the increase is nigh on irrelevant when its barely a third of the minimum of what you need. London could go up by 30%, it would take them to between 3-4k averages and would total about 700 people, Yeah its good they are improving but that isn’t something to celebrate, Whilst 30%, in real terms it’s a fairly small number and they are still miles away from where they need to be, and the figures are still bad.'"
Given that you've already accepted that these things can't be fixed overnight, that's a nonsense argument; attendances have improved quite significantly and they look set to continue to do so. Would you advocate that unless we're able to get 17k next season, we should just give up?
Quote SmokeyTAYou cant on one hand argue that Wakefield shouldn’t bother with these improvements, and blame the RFL for ‘wasting’ all that money on improving them, then expect praise for a 30% improvement in what is a pretty poor attendance figure. One of the major reasons Wakefields attendance is so poor is the stadium and it’s again, small time thinking to think Wakefield don’t have to improve their attendances, don’t have to improve their facility because possibly, in 3 years a Stadium which hasn’t yet had a brick laid, may be built.'"
I'm not arguing that; regardless of what some supporters said at the time, Mr Glover invested the money the RFL told him to, to satisfy the requirements of his temporary licence and buy some time so that NM could be moved on.
Quote SmokeyTAThey don’t have to do it in one year, we are 16 years in to fully pro Rugby League, to pretend that I am demanding all clubs win SL every year and build a new stadium in the off-season is blatant nonsense, We have had 16 years to win something, get to a final, improve their stadiums, and still some fans are acting as if it is too much to ask, in too short a time for them to have made the necessary adjustment to fully pro RL, and they want to pretend that is realism and not small-time thinking.'"
Again, here we can agree; all clubs have had long enough to sort themselves out and in an ideal world, would have done; in WTW's case though, in the absence of a time machine, Mr Glover can't do anything about the preceeding 16 years - he appears to be doing his best to change things for the future though, not least the poor crowds and unsuitable facility. I don't advocate ignoring the past, but I don't see much value in banging on about who should have done what and when.
Quote SmokeyTAHow about some actual realism, some facts.
More people watch our game now than ever before, more people attend games in this era than ever before, there is more money in the game than ever before, the last 10 years have seen a resurge in the international game which was nigh on dead 20 years ago. We have more youngsters playing the game, we have more games televised to a higher production level, than ever before, we are a nationally televised sport, we are the 5th biggest sporting league in Great Britain (by attendance) we are an outstanding sport, the greatest game, we have so much to be proud of bar a fan base that would rather criticise the game, look for the negatives, would rather spin good news to bad and that argues in favour of accepting mediocrity than banging the drum for how good the sport is and how high its potential is.'"
Another point of agreement and all good stuff - with respect to the negative fan base though, I'd suggest that your insistence on pointing to the failures of the previous regime at WTW as a counterpoint to the (relative, modest) successes of the current one, put you firmly in that camp, at least where our club is concerned.