Bradford Bulls address ‘elephant in the room’ hanging over their season

Kurt Haggerty has admitted Bradford Bulls have discussed the want to avoid being Super League’s wooden spooners ahead of two huge games that will determine their league position.

The Bulls head into the final two rounds sat at the foot of the Super League ladder, but have games against two sides, Castleford Tigers and York Knights, that they could yet overtake.

Just four points separate the bottom five and while Bradford are on an awful run of form, widely caused by a woeful injury crisis, Haggerty admitted avoiding bottom has been on their lips this week.

“You may get some coaches who say we’ve not spoken about it or addressed it. We’ve spoken about it,” Haggerty told Love Rugby League.

“It has been the elephant in the room. We’ve addressed it in particular today in our team meeting. We certainly don’t want that tag. We’re going to have to make some sacrifices in this game to make sure we put our best foot forward to win it and obviously carry that over to York. So yeah, we’ve addressed it, we’ve spoken about it and we don’t want that tag.”

Haggerty admitted he was happy with how his group reacted to that conversation, though he was never doubtful of their attitude towards it.

“I knew going over to Toulouse with the team that we had, there were 17 players unavailable and knowing that we only had 16 players in the week, I knew full well we’d respond to the 40 minutes we put in at Leigh. We’ve lost games, we’ve lost a lot of games but it’s been very, very rare we’ve ever had to challenge the attitude of getting it wrong, and we got it wrong for 40 minutes at Leigh. There aren’t many moments in the season that we can call it getting it wrong.”

Regardless of the outcome, Haggerty is pleased with the progress Bradford have made on and off the field during their first year back in the top flight.

When you sit there and reflect, when you’re going through the really tough times at the moment in regards to results, when I break it down, and I sit with Jason Hirst and Brian Noble in particular, and we look at the things that we’ve put in place for next year, going to Vegas, we’ve sorted a pre-season camp away, we’ve brought in some very, very good players.

“There’s still other players to add to that and when you breathe and take stock and look at what we’ve done in the space of less than 12 months, it’s very, very good. It’s been stressful, it’s been challenging, it’s still been hard to recruit, but for the challenges we’ve had and the amount of work we’ve put in, it’s certainly going to be worth it.”

Haggerty confirmed that a location and dates for warm-weather training have yet to be finalised, but that the Bulls would be going overseas during the off-season.

“It’s so important because when you get your overseas boys in, usually you get them just before Christmas or just after. So by the time you go away, you’ve got your full group, you can sharpen your tools and really put your systems and processes in place.”