I attended Bradford’s Odsal Super League return: and I’m willing to eat humble pie

If you stopped for a second and had a look around on Friday evening, it almost felt like the good old days.

Bradford Bulls CEO Jason Hirst said this week the club’s goal upon their return to Super League was to channel the spirit of Bullmania, but also do it their own way.

He also insisted that anyone challenging Odsal’s credentials as a top-flight venue were fine to do so – it’s hard not to find faults with it, after all – but to acknowledge where improvements had been made as the Bulls aimed to put on an opening night show on Friday against Catalans Dragons.

Challenge accepted: it was impossible not to go along and see it for myself. And after all the talk of Odsal being sub-standard, it being embarrassing for Super League and that’s before you even get onto whether the Bulls could hang with the elite sides on the field.. I came away in no doubt that the club deserves its place in the top flight once again.

That’s not necessarily a view I’ve always had, but while Odsal looks and feels the same in some aspects – it’s certainly still just as cold in February – you have to credit the Bulls for the amount of work they’ve done to try and refresh the place.

That work isn’t done yet either, with much more planned over the coming months for supporters. But with new LED advertising boards, brand new floodlights that helped create a superb pre-match light show, a pitch that’s in better nick than some top Super League clubs and just a general upgrade around the place, this isn’t quite the same Odsal you may remember from 2014.

Bradford pulled out all the stops with Bad Boy Chiller Crew booked to do pre-match and half-time entertainment; I was on the terraces for the first half, and there was a big cheer pre-match when it was mentioned they were here. There is a conscious attempt to capture the attention of a new, younger generation of Bradfordians just like in the 90s: this clearly worked as a strategy.

One part of Bullmania the club did channel successfully this week was their ticketing drives. I had heard talk around the town all week of schools initiatives – something I remember myself growing up there in the height of their success – and discounted ticketing schemes for various communities and supporters of other clubs.

You can scoff at the prospect of cheap tickets all you like, but it is how you convince new or lapsed supporters to come to the game. The hardcore fanbase will come no matter what, and in a lot of ways, Friday night was for them and their loyal support throughout the lows and lows of the last 12 years.

But Bradford is a huge city in terms of population, bigger than most within the world of European rugby league. Build it, and they will come. And Bulls certainly did that on Friday and the people responded, with 9,992 there: a marvellous effort given the weather.

I admit I had doubts Bradford could produce nights like these again. It’s no secret I have been critical of the club in recent years but their new regime, headed up by Hirst and a board of directors all with Bradford at their heart, clearly have good intentions for the club and the game.

This is not comparing one club to another either, but how many lower-end Super League clubs are attracting 10,000 supporters for a home game against Catalans Dragons in February? I’d argue not many, if any. Whether the majority of them keep coming back throughout the year is another debate but it did show us one thing Bradford fans argued consistently over recent years: the fanbase is there, the club just needed to reactivate it.

And goodness, how many of those who were convinced to come along for either the first time ever, or the first time in over a decade, will have been persuaded to return next Sunday against Toulouse given what the Bulls produced on the field. There is a whole other article to be written about Kurt Haggerty’s philosophies and his style of play.

The Bulls are entertaining to watch on the pitch, they continue to produce academy talent – Ebon Scurr will be one to watch this year if you aren’t already aware. There is a strong argument that the city hasn’t seen a brand of rugby league as entertaining as this throughout the whole of the Super League era.

There was a famous saying in the world of cricket back in the day: ‘Strong Yorkshire, Strong England’. Essentially, if the White Rose were flourishing, the national team were in a good place.

You can loosely borrow that for this topic and say: Strong Bradford Bulls, Stronger Super League. Just having any variation of the Bulls in Super League, the one that was withering away in the mid-2010s or the one that laboured through the early part of this decade, wasn’t necessarily better for the game.

But this version looks to be undoubtedly one that will make the competition a better place, both on and off the field. It’s only one home game, so you can’t shout it from the rooftops. But based on what I saw on Friday night, the Bradford Bulls that set the standards on and off the field in the 1990s and 2000s isn’t definitively back: but a newer, fresher version may well be in the coming months if they keep this up.