The Bantams aren’t the only Bradford football team heading south this weekend for a final.

Bradford Boys Under-15s have reached the prestigious English Schools’ Football Association decider and will meet Brent at Leicester City’s King Power Stadium on Friday afternoon at 3.30pm.

Bradford have won what is in essence the FA Cup for schoolboys twice before – in 1916 and 2001 – but that was a long way from manager Clive Truelove’s thoughts three years ago.

He was present at the under-12 trials for no other reason than his son Christopher was taking part.

“The standard wasn’t very good,” admitted Clive, who was soon persuaded to run the team with the help of assistant Andy Dunne.

Bringing the team up to competitive standard was achieved via close links with Peter Horne and Alan Nevison at Bradford City in what is a two-way street. Now Bradford are nobody’s fools.

Indeed five of them are attached to the Bantams – Daniel Devine, Kesi Omolo-kum, Sumali Cissa, Reece Webb-Foster and Matthew Foulds.

The team were showing promise last season, winning their league and Yorkshire Cup.

But Truelove confessed: “I thought we might reach the fourth round or fifth round this season but not the final as 138 teams entered it.”

Bradford had a bye in the first round and then beat York (away, 6-4), St Helens (away, 8-1), Chester (home, 2-0), East Riding (away, 2-1), Newcastle (away, 6-1) and Tameside (away, 3-0).

“Newcastle were stunned,” revealed Truelove.

One tactical decision that has helped Bradford is switching from 4-4-2 to 3-5-2.

“We though we were getting rolled in midfield,” said Dunne.