I’VE been working at the T&A for six years, which means I’ve covered the Bulls for that long too.
My first day began less than 24 hours after Joe Keyes’ last-gasp penalty to beat York in League 1, as a campaign that was more fraught than it needed to be got underway.
Ice-creams in Coventry, sketchy hotels in Widnes,10-hour round trips to and from Whitehaven, falling into muddy puddles in Batley and stuck at airports in Toulouse, it’s been quite the experience.
On the field it’s been no less hectic either, with the sport’s ultimate soap opera club continuing to thrill and frustrate in equal measure.
That’s continued into the 2024 campaign, with stunning wins against play-off rivals Featherstone, Toulouse and Sheffield offset by dreadful defeats to struggling York and Batley.
The upshot is that Bulls currently sit sixth in the Betfred Championship, having shown they are capable of competing with the best, even runaway leaders Wakefield for large parts of both of their games this season, and putting in a stinker against the worst.
On paper, Bulls should thump Whitehaven, Doncaster and Dewsbury in their next three games, but we’ve seen this script too many times, and Eamon O’Carroll has warned his side that this is a ‘pivotal block’ in their season.
So, speaking of pivotal, I took a look back at what I felt were THE season-defining games in my five previous full seasons covering Bulls.
2023 – Batley (A)
Bulls looked to be on a decent footing for the first few weeks under interim management duo of Lee Greenwood and Brian Noble, but they were appalling in successive July defeats to Widnes and Barrow.
That meant they travelled to Batley with a sense of trepidation, as the Bulldogs were impressing as usual, looking like a shoo-in for the play-offs and with an 1895 Cup final on the horizon.
But Greenwood and Noble made a huge call, dropping previously ever-present Dec Patton and pairing Jordan Lilley and Lee Gaskell together in the halves.
The duo cut Batley to ribbons all afternoon, and the second half at Mount Pleasant was almost disbelievingly one-sided as Bradford romped to a 42-6 win.
Batley’s season imploded from there, as they lost at Wembley and failed to make the play-offs.
As for Bulls, Patton never played for them again, they ended the season superbly, and were a battling defeat in France away from making the Championship Grand Final, their best campaign statistically since 2015.
2022 – Newcastle (A)
To be clear, season-defining games are not necessarily a good thing.
I openly questioned the prospect of Mark Dunning becoming the full-time head coach in June 2022 but to be fair, he was shoving that scepticism down my throat initially, as his interim spell contained excellent, and comprehensive, away wins at Widnes and Sheffield.
Dunning was appointed full-time at the start of July, with his first game in permanent charge coming at Newcastle, having won five of his eight matches in his interim spell.
But it all came crashing down against Thunder at Kingston Park.
To this day the most pathetic performance I’ve ever seen Bradford produce, they crashed to a dreadful 53-10 defeat against their struggling North-East hosts, conceding tries that would leave an Under-14s side blushing.
The season never recovered, and Dunning’s charges only won twice more in 2022, meaning an embarrassing ninth-placed finish.
2021 – Whitehaven (H)
Bulls have not lost at Whitehaven since 1971, which should bode well for this weekend.
But it has been a different story when the Cumbrians have travelled to West Yorkshire.
An ugly 12-4 defeat to Whitehaven at Odsal in August 2022 was part of that aforementioned terrible end of season run under Dunning, but the home loss to them 11 months earlier was far more damaging.
After a good away win against York at the end of August, John Kear’s Bulls looked nailed on to finish third.
The subsequent home defeat to all-conquering defeat Toulouse was fair enough, while the following weekend’s 10-9 loss at Widnes was careless more than anything else.
But Whitehaven on the final day really did set alarm bells ringing, and came out of nowhere after Bulls had raced into a comfortable 16-0 lead.
They collapsed in the face of the likes of Lachlan Walmsley and Louis Jouffret, who have since gone on to greater things, and lost 36-22.
Kear was apoplectic after the match, as Bulls chucked away a shot at a home play-off by ending up fifth.
It was hard to view them as anything like serious play-off contenders after that choke, and they soon bowed out of promotion contention by losing their eliminator clash at Batley.
2019 – Toulouse (A)
The 2020 campaign was over before it really began due to the outbreak of the Covid-19 pandemic in March, so we can skip over that one.
But 2019 was a real test for Bulls as they finally got chance to compete in the Championship on an even footing after a liquidation-ravaged 2017 campaign and a 2018 stint in League 1.
They did a pretty decent job and while the sensational Challenge Cup win over Leeds was the obvious highlight, their superb victory in France that summer laid down a marker that they could compete with anyone in the second tier on their day.
In a thrilling encounter played in baking heat, Bulls established an early 8-0 advantage, fell 10 points behind, edged back in front, then lost the lead again, before Matty Wildie’s late converted try wrapped up a memorable 26-24 win.
That was the last time Toulouse lost a regular-season home game in the Championship for four years, and while Bulls ended up just missing out on the play-offs that year, it showed every team needed to take them seriously.
2018 – Workington (H)
Bulls’ ding-dong with York all season was fascinating, between two teams who were clearly far too good for League 1.
Bradford won by two points when the pair clashed in North Yorkshire, the Knights then won by two when they faced off in West Yorkshire.
It was almost plain sailing otherwise for both, except for Bulls losing by one point at Workington and a surprise defeat for York at Whitehaven.
That narrowly gave Bulls the edge on points difference, until they fumbled the bag spectacularly with a terrible 24-18 home defeat in August.
Incredibly, that came against Leon Pryce’s Workington once again, and Bulls knew they had blown their chances of winning the title and automatic promotion there and then.
But that embarrassing defeat seemed to put the fire into Bulls’ bellies and they were scintillating for the rest of the season.
An Oldham side who had given them a real test twice in the regular season were blown away 47-0 in the play-off semis at Odsal, before Bulls gained revenge on Workington, making it third time lucky with a 27-8 victory in the final to earn promotion alongside champions York.
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