Saturday 19 July 2014 14:25, UK
Bradford coach James Lowes insists the "R" word has not been mentioned this week but he knows it will be the hot topic if the Bulls' relegation from Super League is confirmed on Sunday.
Fourteen points adrift of safety with seven rounds left of the regular season, Bradford will accompany London Broncos in the drop to the Championship if they lose for the third time this year to Huddersfield at the John Smith's Stadium.
Optimistic Bulls fans may cling to hope that the club will win a potential High Court battle to claw back the six points they were docked for going into administration but Lowes is not counting on it.
If we are relegated, then we'll deal with that on Monday morning. If we get a stay of execution, then we'll go onto Wigan and deal with that.
“I'll let other people deal with that," he said. "It won't have any ramifications on what we do. Our job is still the same - to win irrelevant of the situation.
“It doesn't change how we approach anything. We haven't mentioned relegation at all. I don't see any reason to mention it. Let's focus on the game and everything else will take care of itself.
"If we are relegated, then we'll deal with that on Monday morning. If we get a stay of execution, then we'll go onto Wigan and deal with that. We're focused on the game and anything that happens post-game we'll deal with after the match."
The pragmatic Lowes, who was appointed as Francis Cummins' successor a month ago, has already begun to prepare for life in the Championship by drawing up a hit list of potential signings.
A number of players, including Lee Gaskell and Adrian Purtell, have already expressed a desire to stay and help get the club back up into Super League at the first attempt, but Lowes knows there is certain to be plenty of change.
"I'd like to keep all the players but that just isn't going to happen," he continued. "We'll keep what we can and, although some will want to leave, we'll have a massively clearer picture when our situation becomes clear.
"There's a plan A and a plan B and we've started the process of looking at players for both plans.
"We just need that definite whether we're down or not down. Once we know where we are, we can decide what our plan is and what we do in the future.
"In the position we're in, it's highly unlikely we're going to win all our remaining games and Salford or Hull lose all theirs. We're half preparing ourselves for the plan B anyway and telling players what we want to do in the future."
