Quote Frank Whitcombe="Frank Whitcombe"So I offer my opinion to a public forum and I get the usual response, so lets get a few things straight whilst we're all getting things off our chest!
Firstly, I have pledged a four figure sum of money to the quest (despite my mistrust of the BoD), and though I'm not a wealthy man I earn a good salary and I can afford to donate that cash to try and help our club, today I took the last shirt Lesley Vainokolo wore for our great club, that is signed and framed off my office wall and dropped it off with Stuart Duffy to auction tomorrow (hopefully for several thousand pounds), and no I am not Chris Caisley, nor do I have any association with him or anyone he associates with, I hope he too will be consigned to history in the not too distant future!
My donation is no more worthy than anyone else's and I would love to shake the hand of every last person who has pledged money to help MY club out of its current plight whether it be £1 or £1,000!
I first visited Odsal in 1978 (I was 5) with my Dad, Grandad, and Great Grandad, we sat in the main stand on the white benches and my Great Grandad shook so badly with Parkinsons that the entire row shook by halftime, it helped us keep warm. My Grandad donated money in 1963 at the meeting in St Georges Hall and he will be turning in his grave to see it all happening again! Peter Roe was my boyhood hero and the club means the world to me, I am genuinely heartbroken at our current plight, but my story is by no means unique.
I have publicly criticised the running of the club for some time now, on this forum (only to be bullied off the board with some of the vitriol sent my way after speaking my mind), and when discussing the club with friends and family. We've got some very big decisions wrong and often obviously so! We've lost our way with recruitment, lost kids we should have been playing, kept a coach not up to the task in front of him (not his fault), I could go on, and worse of all for me it now transpires that the BoD have been at best less than frank and at worse disingenuous on several occasions about decisions they have taken and more importantly why they have taken them.
Its oft trotted out that they are genuine guys trying their best and working free, which I'm sure is probably true, but they're out of their depth if thats the case and should have stood aside long before now, the adage you get what you pay for may never have been more apt - We are a professional sports team playing in that sports elite competition, we shouldn't be playing at it, and if we cannot afford to play with the big boys we shouldn't be jeopardising the clubs future to do so, or at least until we can afford to once more, sport is cyclical and as a Bradford fan you learn patience!
So I can fully understand why people don't want to pledge, and I would hope that people can see my view that the Board members positions are ultimately untenable, they are out of goodwill and almost out of time, perfect storm of unique financial circumstances or not, but hopefully the good folk of Bradford will save their rugby league team once again!
And its in that spirit that I urge everyone who can, to pledge as much as you can to save the sporting love of my life - We have become numb to administration, after all Bradford City are still around as are Glasgow Rangers and its not that bad really is it? But I tend to agree with the worst views of the outcome of administration we just can't take that risk, so lets get through this together and then set about ensuring it cannot happen again.
So please pledge and keep running with the Bulls cos we're alright!'"
Frank - I am certain that someone's hacked your account. Just to cater for the 0.1% possibility that they have not and this is the real you -
and at times its felt like I was the only person shouting about the shark in the water while everyone else happily paddled away!
