Brian McDermott was at Odsal earlier this week to give his thoughts on the latest derby between Bradford and Leeds.

He was asked about Francis Cummins’ improving young team and their prospects of making the play-offs for the first time in five years.

“That would be a huge feather in Franny’s cap,” said the Rhinos coach ahead of tomorrow’s televised showdown.

“I think Franny has shown his worth already by making the team and the club believable.

“I don’t think you can underestimate, and I know this from my experience at London, how big a job it is to gel people together.

“You need to get players to believe they’ve got a chance, especially after what Bradford went through last year.

“But the Bradford players certainly reckon they’ve got a chance and that’s down to the job Franny has done.

“When Bradford are on top of their game they can beat anybody.

“You can’t say that about every team in Super League but you can with Bradford.”

McDermott’s positivity is understandable: he served Bradford with distinction for over 10 years as a formidable prop, playing well over 200 games.

Although he is keen to stress he is now “100 per cent Leeds”, it is clear that Bradford will always have a place in his heart.

In his career with Northern and then the Bulls, the 43-year-old played in every position in the pack apart from hooker after signing from Eastmoor ARLFC following a spell in the Royal Marines, where he served in the first Gulf War in Iraq and Northern Ireland.

McDermott, who also fought as a professional boxer, fondly remembers when the club underwent a major transformation during the switch from winter to summer following the launch of Super League in 1996.

“When Matty Elliott took over, I started to learn about certain ways of handling people and what you should and shouldn’t do,” remembered McDermott.

“By the time Nobby (Brian Noble) took over, we pretty much had everything in our locker.

“Nobby didn’t really bring anything technical, other than the fact he was an outstanding manager of the game itself.

“He really knew when to highlight whether to kick early or kick late.

“Or he’d say ‘in this game we’re going to pass a lot, this game we’re not going to pass at all’.

“He managed the bigger picture really well. He took over a senior team and managed all those senior blokes in a good way.”

After winning their maiden Super League title in 1997, the Bulls proved an unstoppable force, with the rise of Bullmania fuelling their on-field success.

McDermott said: “In our first Super League game, we played Castleford at home.

“We had a crowd of 10,000 and it was like there was an almost instant click of mentality and attitude.

“Almost overnight there seemed like there was a buzz about the place and that was more to do with was happening off the pitch.

“Brian Smith and Peter Deakin really did a fantastic job there, headed up by Chris Caisley of course, and the results started to come.

“We made a couple of big signings and made a final. All of a sudden we were on the scene then.”

As has been well documented, the Bulls never looked back.

Nor has McDermott since taking the reins at Headingley and guiding Leeds to successive Super League titles, continuing a remarkable golden era that Bradford enjoyed not so long ago.

Yet McDermott admitted: “There are teams out there who are better with the ball than us at the moment.

“We lose possession and chance our arm far too often and give ourselves far too much defence. We need to be more controlled and clinical at some stage.”