While being billed as the Game of the Year in one corner of west Yorkshire may be a slight exaggeration, it is refreshing that for once the focus falls on Bradford Bulls for the right reasons.
On Sunday the biggest crowd in the history of rugby league’s lowest professional tier, League 1, will watch the Bulls play York in what will go a long way to determining the champions. It will be the largest attendance outside the Super League, exceeding crowds around a third of the top-flight draw on a regular basis. “I think the game will be one of the biggest in the UK this year,” says Bradford’s owner, Andrew Chalmers.
Occasions like these were once commonplace for a club synonymous with success in Super League’s early years. Between 1996 and 2006 Bradford won the league four times, the Challenge Cup twice and were world champions three times. What followed, however, was a remarkable decline and fall from grace.
Three administrations in four years and numerous financial crises led to the Bulls’ liquidation at the beginning of last year. Though they reformed under Chalmers’ ownership, they were relegated from the Championship into League 1 for the first time since their founding in 1907, unable to overturn the 12-point deduction imposed on them by the Rugby Football League.
Were this an American sporting franchise, a Hollywood blockbuster would have followed by now. Victory on Sunday will be a significant step on the road to promotion back to the Championship: and while Bradford’s sights are set higher than that, there is an element of caution in the club’s new-look approach.
“I genuinely think it will take us a while yet to build to a point where we would be fully sustainable as a Super League club,” Chalmers tells the Observer. “We aren’t there yet but 18 months into the resurrection of this club we have a clearer understanding of what needs to happen moving forward.”
Chalmers senses there is a renewed interest in the Bulls after years of supporters turning their backs on Bradford thanks to the calamitous financial mismanagement of the club. At one time crowds of 15,000 were common at their Odsal home but he explains: “It could literally take a decade or more to rebuild trust and confidence. But everyone knows we need to be patient and ensure we don’t reach too far, too quickly.”
Underpinning Chalmers’ vision for Bradford is youth development. That is nothing new for the Bulls, whose academy has developed such as Sam Burgess in recent years. But even now, at the bottom rung, Bradford’s focus is on juniors – they are the only side outside the top tier awarded the highest-category academy status by the RFL.
“It’s easy for some clubs to spend £1.75m on assembling a top-flight team,” Chalmers says, a thinly veiled dig at those elite sides who do not run academies. “Once upon a time the lure of Bradford could get anyone through the door but now we have to work harder,” adds their head of youth, John Bastian. “We want Bradford-born players to be part of our team for decades to come, not years.”
The rewards are being reaped already: the core of the side who now top League 1 are homegrown and the Bulls are the only side outside the Super League who have representation in the latest England academy squad.
And at the top? “The single most critical decision I’ve made,” is how Chalmers describes the appointment of the former England coach, John Kear. The 63-year-old, who masterminded Sheffield Eagles’ Challenge Cup triumph of 1998, insisted after his appointment last December that restoring Bradford to their former glories would be his greatest achievement. Eight months on that view has not changed.
“I met Andrew on many occasions prior to taking the job and I was assured there was some stability, which I can see now,” Kear says. “There’s a great future for Bradford – and people are telling me that for the first time in five or six years the club can look forward in a positive manner with some stability.”
For Bradford and their supporters, the word stability is what they need to hear. The days of heavyweight tussles with such as Leeds and St Helens are still some way off but at long last the Bulls are at least on the right path again.
