I've stopped worrying about this situation now. With the playing/coaching appointments made so far coupled with the success of the pledge scheme I'm pretty confident that things will work out for the club. We'll probably end up with a far better half back situation than the last couple of years.

TBH I have no doubt that the club, Orford and his agent know at least what will happen and that once an amicable solution is reached that an announcement will be made.

Here we go...



[urlhttp://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/sport/nrl/former-manly-captain-matt-orford-desperate-to-leave-bradford-bulls-and-return-to-nrl/story-e6frexnr-1225937358717[/url



again

Looks like Duckett is earning his spurs. All the right moves and all the right quotes.

Anyone else thinking we may be on the receiving end of a little Karma?



We had all the hoo-ha around Chris Walker (is he, or is he not coming) [i[uand if[/u[/i we did shaft Walker (to get Orford) you have to wonder if we're getting a little payback.



I don't think anyone really wants Orford to leave, however, if we can get something for the remainder of his contract (which would be hoped so, given the amount of interest for the guy in the NRL), and obtain a suitable replacement/s then it might not be that bad.



If however he leaves us in the lurch and we don't get replacements it's going to cost us a lot. 8th place will become the target rather than a top 4 one. Any failure on the first target with Orford and we would hopefully still be in the play-offs. If we aim 8th without him and fail, well, the season tickets for the following year would need to be cheaper still!!!!



If Potter knew that Orford was leaving, you'd have hoped we may have signed some higher calibre players than we have (not to say the guys signed won't do well), but you do have to wonder if we'd have managed to obtain some better players by being able to spread Orford's reported "higher level" salary around.



It's all still hearsay, but lets hope that it's sorted soon. Ok, there's plenty of time to go till the start of the new season but at this rate we're bedding two new halfbacks in (again) rather than just one.

I can't imagine what you're basing that on to be honest. If Orford leaves (and it still is IF, of course) then we are back to what we had for the second half of last season at halfback. I can't seriously imagine that anyone on here, let alone at the club, would regard that as satisfactory. I don't know what the club actually [iknows

[/i about Matt's current status, only what they let on, which isn't much, but I would hope some contingency plan is in play, and to be fair I can't seriously imagine there isn't. We'll certainly be very fortunate to pick up a class scrum half at this stage though.

That's what I'm relying on and why I am not worrying. I just can't imagine that the club will not have some sort of contingency in place. The mention of the potential of up to 4 more signings that keeps getting mentioned in the T&A would support that. The fact that they aren't being announced yet suggests they are dependant on the Orford situation being resolved.



If we get two recognised half backs who aren't "world beaters" we'll still be better off than what we had for most of last year which was no Orford and non-half backs filling in (i.e. Sykes, Addy, Kearney, L'Estrange).



I'm still hopeful that if Orford goes we'll end up with one class half back and another who is a solid performer and will complement the rest of the signings well.

Well if we're basing things on Connor's recent article (which I'm sure has plenty of truth behind it), then it seems like the club are hoping for a hb pairing of Pryce and Hanbury.

But there's obviously a very good chance we'll end up with neither of those players, and I'm not sure what would happen if that was the case.

We did not shaft Walker.



The fact is, we offered him a contract in good faith. The club then got a number of calls from NRL clubs asking if we were aware that Walker's agent was offering him to them. Also, while players like L'Estrange and Hall were in almost constant contact with the club about things like schools for the kids, good places to live, where's the training ground, when do I have to be there for pre-season and the 1001 other things you need to sort out if you're moving yourself and your family to the other side of the world, there was no contact from Walker or his agent. There's then the fact that come 4th November when the team was due to return for pre-season training, Walker had not even APPLIED for a visa to come to Bradford.

Very interesting.

We must hope, I guess. The problem remains though, that all the out of contract halves (of any quality) won't hang around waiting to see what Matt Orford decides to do, even if they want to come to a club which hasn't made the play-offs in two years and, unless we're very very lucky and someone becomes unexpectedly available late on we are going to end up with something less than a top quality scrum half.



For stand off we still have Brett Kearney, though he's not [ireally[/i a halfback. The problem remains though, that halfbacks operate as pairs, and, at best, should complement each other, so without knowing who is scrum half it's difficult to sort out your stand off. So, if Orford goes, at this stage the chances of obtaining a similar quality replacement are slimmer than slim and so are our chances of having a decent pairing for next year. We do have some decent creative players and it's looking like we might be relying on them to fill in again, certainly not the situation we hoped to be in.

Looks like Southernwood will be getting plenty of games.