IN my seven seasons covering the Bradford Bulls, there were arguably more memorable moments and matches than in any other year in 2024.
I’ve picked out six defining matches of the Eamon O’Carroll era, which sadly came to an abrupt end on Thursday night, just one year into a contract that was supposed to take him until the end of 2027 at Odsal.
Let’s start with a slightly left-field pick from way back when.
BULLS 21 SWINTON 12 (MARCH 2024)
Bradford’s CEO Jason Hirst laid his cards out on the table at the start of February, insisting the club were going all out to win the AB Sundecks 1895 Cup.
For too long, Bulls had treated both that and the Betfred Challenge Cup as something of an inconvenience for too long and had spent two decades getting nowhere near winning knockout silverware.
But the 1895 Cup offers a genuine chance for Championship sides for glory at Wembley, with the likes of Halifax and Sheffield succeeding over the last five years while Bulls have barely even offered a shrug in falling short.
They gave it a proper go this year though, thrashing Dewsbury, overcoming a determined Keighley side, then most impressively of all, seeing off a Swinton side who looked a real threat early in the 2024 campaign, winning in Toulouse for example.
Getting the better of the Lions at Odsal meant Bulls had a marquee semi-final against Wakefield, which brought by far the biggest crowd of the season to Odsal, with 5,340 fans in attendance that day.
And the underdogs competed gamely, winning at half-time before eventually being blown away by an exceptional Trinity side.
FEATHERSTONE 14 BULLS 24 (APRIL 2024)
Traditionally, Bulls’ biggest Championship rivals are Halifax, but I have always found the vitriol and enmity runs deeper with Featherstone.
There is real hatred between the fanbases and clubs, and depressingly Fev have largely being able to lord it over Bradford in the last decade.
That was particularly the case at Post Office Road, where Bulls had depressingly not won since 2015 heading into this third league game of the season in April.
Yet Bradford were brilliant on enemy territory that day, with young Huddersfield loanees Connor Carr and Aidan McGowan tearing them apart in attack and the defence remaining solid throughout.
Kieran Gill also produced one of the memorable images of the season with his try celebration.
As one Bulls fans said to me at full time: “I never felt we were going to lose that game”.
And perhaps that was the most impressive thing of all, getting that first win there in decade should have been an almighty struggle, yet O’Carroll’s side made it look relatively easy.
BULLS 13 WIDNES 14 (APRIL 2024)
Three weeks after that Featherstone game, Bradford hosted Widnes, off the back of their first real setback of the season, a poor defeat at struggling York.
But in many ways this game was worse, as Bulls threw away a comfortable 13-6 lead in the final eight minutes with some shocking game management.
After letting in a converted try, allowing Tom Gilmore to slot the game-levelling drop goal was careless.
To let him have the space do it again to win the game moments later was unforgivable.
O’Carroll was apoplectic afterwards, but tellingly, it was a story that was repeated against Batley, Barrow and Featherstone later in the season.
TOULOUSE 12 BULLS 12 (JULY 2024)
For the last half a decade in the South of France, it’s been a case of how many points Bulls might lose by.
So while the home win over Toulouse in April was good, the reverse fixture saw the more impressive result in my opinion.
One of the most brutal, bruising, ferociously-competitive Championship matches I have ever seen, Bulls somehow survived two yellow cards and the searing heat to secure a 12-12 draw.
It proved Bradford could compete with an excellent full-time side, and gave supporters the belief that their side could give anyone a game.
HALIFAX 14 BULLS 10 (SEPTEMBER 2024)
After a real wobble over the late summer, Bradford looked to be hitting their straps again, and going into their penultimate game, looked in with a genuine chance of beating Toulouse into second place, thus guaranteeing a home semi-final.
But whether they were spooked by the French side’s brilliant comeback the previous evening, as they recovered from 12-0 down in Widnes to snatch an 18-12 win at the death, Bulls were awful at Halifax.
Their discipline, over-eagerness and game management were all over the place, as they allowed their great rivals to guarantee survival in the division, while posting such a worrying performance of their own just weeks before the play-offs.
TOULOUSE 21 BULLS 20 (OCTOBER 2024)
We should have had that brilliant eliminator win over Featherstone, arguably a contender for Bulls’ best performance of the season, here in this list, but it is hard to call that 25-12 victory ‘defining’ given what happened in France seven days later.
Bradford were unbeaten against Toulouse this season heading into Sunday’s play-off semi-final and they survived an awful start and Kieran Gill’s yellow card to lead 12-8 with a quarter of the game to go.
But if one yellow card was poor in a game of such magnitude, a second, for Jayden Myers, was stupid in the extreme.
That came back to bite, as Toulouse moved 20-12 ahead against 12 men, and there was no way back from there.
Bad discipline and bad game management had cost Bulls one time too many, and as Jarrod Sammut miserably admitted to the T&A afterwards: “Sadly, I felt like we were our own worst enemies, and it stings to say that.”
A season full of highs and lows and huge moments had come to an all-too-familiar end.
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