Bradford Bulls have gone to the land Down Under on multiple occasions over the last few months.
They have brought over Mitch Souter, Zac Fulton, Tyran Ott, Max Lehmann and Logan Bayliss-Brow to play for them in 2024, all of whom are under 25 and have potentially great rugby league careers ahead of them.
Not only that, but both of their starting wingers on Sunday at Whitehaven, Jorge Taufua and Jayden Okunbor, are Australian born, with the two of them having both dropped down from the Betfred Super League to turn out in the red, amber and black.
It has been quite the recruitment drive on that front from Bradford over the last 12 months, but they know just how much rugby league talent there is from Australia right now, whether that be players who are not quite NRL-ready, or ones who can rebuild in the Championship after struggling in the top-flight.
And it continues Bulls’ proud history in the summer era of having talented Aussies among their ranks, with Lehmann and Bayliss-Brow the latest to join the list over the past week.
They will have to go a long way to emulate these five however…
MICHAEL WITHERS
Withers was an Irish international, with his grandparents both born there, but he hailed from Sydney and made his name at Balmain Tigers in the NRL in the mid-90s.
His talent was obvious from a young age and in 1994, aged only 18, he was called up by Australian Schoolboys and won the coveted Dally M Junior Player of the Year award.
He joined Bradford ahead of the 1999 season, and while that ultimately ended in disappointment with a Super League Grand Final defeat to St Helens, he more than made up for that two years later.
Withers was sensational in the 2001 showpiece, scoring three tries as Bulls obliterated Wigan 37-6 at Old Trafford.
He won the Harry Sunderland Trophy as the obvious man of the match, and remains the only player to score a Grand Final hat-trick.
That form carried over into the 2002 World Club Challenge, as he scored twice in a rollicking 41-26 victory over NRL champions Newcastle Knights to ensure Bulls won the trophy for the first time.
Withers played throughout Bulls’ most golden era, winning the Super League Grand Final with them three times.
He also featured in all three of their World Club Challenge successes between 2002 and 2006, while he lifted the Challenge Cup in 2000, scoring twice in the win over Leeds at Murrayfield, and 2003.
With a trophy cabinet fit to burst, and 108 tries in 177 games for Bulls, Withers has a case to be the club’s greatest modern-era Aussie of all.
DANIEL GARTNER
The Australian forward was part of the great Manly Sea Eagles side of the 1990s, whose defeat to Canterbury in the 1995 Premiership final was a shock akin to Sheffield’s Challenge Cup final win over Wigan three years later.
After dominating all before them that year before flopping when it mattered, Gartner and Manly bounced back to lift the 1996 Premiership title.
After 120 appearances for the Sea Eagles, and a cap for Australia, Gartner headed over to England to play for Bulls in 2000.
Playing at second row in that destruction of the Warriors at Old Trafford in 2001, he also scored in that thrilling World Club Challenge success against Newcastle.
In his final season in professional rugby league before heading back home to study to be a physiotherapist at Sydney University, Gartner played a key role in Bulls’ famous 2003 treble.
And in a nice full circle moment for the Sea Eagles stalwart, when back in Australia, he enjoyed a stint as physio for Manly’s youth sides.
GRAEME BRADLEY
Bradley was 32 by the time he pitched up at Bulls in 1996, as the Super League era began in earnest.
Part of the Penrith Panthers squad that won their first ever Premiership title in 1991 and in St George Dragons’ team that were Aussie runners-up in 1993, either side of a brief spell in England at Castleford, many might have though the centre’s best days were behind him when he arrived at Odsal.
But he enjoyed a special relationship with Bradford’s head coach Brian Smith, who had been his schoolteacher in the 1970s, as well as his coach at Illawarra Steelers in the 1980s.
Playing for Bulls in the 1990s gave Bradley the chance to spend a third decade working with Smith, and he repaid the man who was almost a father figure to him.
Bradley was a vital cog in the Bulls machine that reached the Challenge Cup finals in 1996 and 1997, while he was a key factor in the club’s first-ever Super League success in 1997, as Matthew Elliott’s men won their first 20 league games to storm to the title in emphatic fashion.
The veteran enjoyed one more season at Bulls, before deciding to retire at the end of the 1998 campaign aged 34.
BEN JEFFRIES
The half-back left Wests Tigers at the end of 2002 to come to Wakefield, and played for both Trinity and Bulls over the next decade.
By the time he finally left Bradford, at the end of his second spell there in 2012, he was the only Australian to have spent 10 consecutive seasons in Super League.
He was deserving of that accolade, simply on account of being a mighty fine stand off.
As a youngster at Wakefield, Jeffries’ try-scoring record was ridiculous for his position, as he helped himself to 44 tries in 60 games combined in 2004 and 2005, guiding them to a surprise elimination semi-final in the former year.
Moving to Bulls at the end of 2007, Jeffries helped guide Bulls to the play-offs, taking on a huge role within the team as the hitherto fantastic half-back pairing of Iestyn Harris and Paul Deacon saw their influence start to wane.
He left to join Wakefield in 2009, but returned to Bulls in 2011 and 2012, where he had a major influence on the career of his young half-back partner Luke Gale, who went on to win the League leaders’ Shield and Man of Steel award with Castleford, before sealing the Challenge Cup for Leeds in 2020 with a last-gasp drop goal.
Finishing with a flourish at Bulls, Jeffries racked up a phenomenal 19 try assists in 2012, with his prowess as a boot to ball player never in doubt.
GLENN MORRISON
Back rower Morrison was no spring chicken by the time he joined Bulls in 2007, having made over 200 appearances for historic Aussie quartet Balmain Tigers, where he played in the same side as Withers, North Sydney Bears, North Queensland Cowboys and Parramatta Eels.
Yet remarkably he was still playing rugby in Bradford a couple of years ago, turning out for union side Bradford Salem when not being their coach.
Morrison is now intrinsically liked with Bradford, thanks to his time at Salem, and his current roles as a teacher at Bradford Grammar School and Bulls’ academy head coach.
It all started for him in the city when he joined the Odsal outfit under then-head coach Steve McNamara.
The current Catalans boss clearly valued the 30-year-old, immediately making the Aussie his vice-captain.
And Morrison was an instant hit, with his first season in England in 2007 seeing him named in the Super League Dream Team, while he swept the board at the club’s end of season awards.
His form carried on into 2008, where he made a monumental 733 tackles that season, the sixth-most in the whole of Super League.
Morrison was a positive influence on a couple of young back rowers while at Bulls too, with Sam Burgess and Elliott Whitehead going on to become two of England’s best players of the past 15 years.
A special mention to the likes of Jeremy Donougher, Brad Meyers and Heath L'Estrange as well, as we hope the current Australian crop at Bulls go on to be as fondly remembered as some of these past stars from Down Under.
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