By David Hibell
August 12 2003

It is nearly time for pre season training and I know that new stories have been thin on the ground with no news of any appearing, whilst the majority of the stories from last season are being signed to other sites who are cherry picking off the best stories we had.

 However I would like to announce that talks are under way to get around twenty new stories for the web site.  Whilst it is realised that twenty stories are not enough to cover the whole season I am confident that I will get more stories before the season starts.

 

I haven't actually signed contracts with these stories and probably won't for some time, but I'm confident that I'll have some sort of agreement in place by the time training starts.  Everything is coming along and I have identified a group of stories that I am looking at today.  I will sit down with my friend Piers and fill him in on which stories I have spoken to and start to get the paperwork sorted out.

 

The message I want to get over is that I am talking to some experienced stories of quality to help bring on the younger stories. 

 

There are rumours that some of the stories have been linked with other web sites, but I am confident that they will appear on this one.  I cannot name the stories at this moment, but I like to help the media and tell them exactly when these stories will happen, but it's often more complicated than that.

 

There is still no news that Piers will stay with me but he has helped put in place a management team to help oversee site matters.

 

The site will be run on a greatly reduced budget next season following the relegation from the Zurich Premiership, I want to revive the sites fortunes with a portfolio of stories with Bristol connections who will take pride in their sentences and the site’s history.

 

I have drawn up a profile of the sort of story I want to attract, and top of the list is an association with the city.

I have thoroughly researched the background of each potential story, even investigating their iambic parameter and paragraph structure away from the web site.

It's going to be a hard season so I need mentally tough stories who can cope with some degree of failure and frustration in what will be a testing environment for all of us.

I am not promising them anything and we have had some interesting stories that have walked away because they want a nice easy life.