Bradford Bulls CEO feels club "missed chance" in play-offs

Knowing Bradford still would have been nowhere near reaching Super League due to the IMG rankings system even if they had beaten Toulouse in the Betfred Championship play-off semis and Wakefield in the Grand Final, surely what transpired was more palatable?

Better to lose in the semis and say fair enough, surely, than pull of two stunning away victories but not go up?

All of the last five second-tier champions have been promoted to Super League as a result, and returning to the top flight has been the holy grail for everyone associated with Bradford since their relegation from it 10 years ago.

As a fan myself, I'd have been frustrated, upset and angry at Bulls being denied their chance to compete in Super League despite winning the Grand Final.

It's allowed me to find some consolation from that 21-20 defeat to Toulouse a fortnight ago, which meant Bulls could not have gone up under any system.

But Jason Hirst is wired differently to me, and in a society where democracy is and should be king, I was impressed by the club CEO's emphatic rebuttal as I tried to play devil's advocate.

He told the T&A: “I’ve no hesitation in my response to which of the two scenarios I’d have preferred.

“I’d rather have got to the Grand Final and won it.

“You can only control the controllables and for us to have got to a Grand Final and won it, we’d have done all we could on the field of play.

“Ultimately, whether we’d have been promoted or not, we’d have been winners, the best team in the Championship and the 13th best side in this country.

A determined Bulls side kept Wakefield to 14 points at Odsal in July, and that battling defeat would have offered them some hope had they made the Grand Final at Belle Vue. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“I’d have 100 per cent taken getting to the grand final at all over the semi-final, because even if we’d lost that to Wakefield, it still would have been one step further than what we did achieve.”

That 21-20 defeat in Toulouse was also a real financial blow, with Hirst saying: “If we’d have got to the final, it would have been worth £50,000 to us in gate receipts.

“That’s if we’d lost the game, we’d have made considerably more than that figure had we won the final.

“Sport, particularly at professional, first-team level, is about winning when it boils down to it.

“We didn’t win in Toulouse and that rankles with me, but I’ve got to remind myself not to let it eat away at me.

“I have to try and look at how far we’ve come in such a short space of time, but I’m not here for us to finish runners-up or third, I’m here for us to win stuff.”

Hirst has been a Bradford supporter since he was a child in the mid-1970s and the agony of that defeat in Toulouse remains etched on his face a fortnight on.

He said: “I’m a fan, first and foremost, so I just want the Bradford Bulls to win.

“I’m still heartbroken by the defeat, I’m still annoyed by it, but looking at the bigger picture, we went to Toulouse 12 months prior at the same stage and lost by about 20 points, without ever really getting close enough to be in with a chance of winning that semi-final.

Bulls gave Toulouse a decent game in the pair's 2023 play-off semi-final, but the hosts always had the edge that evening in their 38-20 victory. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“This year was different as we lost by a point, and in some respects that’s harder to take than a heavy defeat.

“The frustration for me was that we coughed the ball up 17 times in Toulouse, and if you do that in any match, especially in a semi-final against top quality opposition, you expect to get spanked.

“The fact that didn’t happen to us is testament to the effort, the spirit and the resilience of the players, which Brian (Noble), Lee (Greenwood) and Eamon (O’Carroll) have instilled in them.

“In that respect, I’m proud we managed to run Toulouse so close.

“But I can’t help but think, if we’d performed like we did in beating Featherstone the weekend before, we’d have won comfortably again in Toulouse, so that’ll always niggle away at me.

“If you’d told me we’d finish third and lose in the play-off semis at the start of the season, I wouldn’t have accepted it, I’d have said we needed to finish in the top two and be in the Grand Final.

“In that respect, we didn’t achieve what we wanted to, but equally, the amount of injuries we had was horrific.

Chester Butler went into this season as a key part of Bulls' back row, and started brightly too, but he has now been forced to retire due to injury at the age of just 29. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“We used 40-odd players and still managed to come third and lose a semi-final, so if you’d told me all that 12 months ago, I’d have probably taken it.

“It depends what mood I’m in, as to whether I’m positive or ultra-constructive, but overall I think we missed an opportunity in Toulouse.

“I feel that and I’m sure the players do, but it’s not about looking back, it’s about learning our lessons to help us move forward.

“I firmly believe we’ll go better next year, but I appreciate that’s easy to say and harder to deliver.”

There were pros and cons to Bulls’ huge turnover of players in 2024.

While they brought in some real quality at times during the season, which they might not have had to go looking for if the first-team regulars had stayed fit, it meant they lacked any consistency in selection, which was probably a factor in a handful of disjointed performances.

Hirst said: “I think it was around 45 or 46 players we used in the end, so the fact we did have that many and still finish third is testament to the coaching staff and the players themselves.

“It’s also testament to the people at this club that have got the contacts to bring in high-quality loan players.

“We’re not just bringing in any Tom, Dick and Harry, it’s Jayden Okunbor, it’s Franklin Pele, it’s Harvey Makin, even the likes of Max Wood and Keanan Brand for a game or so.

Jayden Okunbor could not stop scoring in his initial loan spell from Hull FC earlier this year, so Bulls ensured they made that deal permanent over the summer. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“There are not many clubs at our level who can bring in that calibre of players in on short-term deals, but we can for a couple of reasons.

“One is that we’re the Bradford Bulls, and people want to play for this club, but it’s also because of the contacts we’ve got within the game and the good relationships we’ve got with Super League clubs.

“The fact we did so well with so many players is testament to a lot of people, but ideally you only want to be using 30 players at most in a season.

“We need to look at our organisation internally, and that’s what I’m doing right now, to understand why we’ve had so many injuries.

“What can we do better? What do we need to do differently?

“That goes for all areas of our business, we don’t rest on our laurels.

“We look at what we’re doing, we’re self-critical, we’ll review, we’ll learn our lessons and we’ll implement improvement plans.

“That’s a continual process of improvement, which is how any organisation worth its salt works.

“That’s a big part of my job at the Bradford Bulls, to ensure that all facets and departments within the club do that honestly and openly, on the understanding that we’re striving towards excellence.”