After all three promoted sides secured victories in Super League this weekend, Bradford Bulls head coach Kurt Haggerty believes that not enough has been made of their efforts.
Haggerty’s side knocked off Huddersfield Giants on Friday night, whilst York Knights beat Hull FC and Toulouse Olympique bagged an emphatic 46-0 win over St Helens.
As a result, it now means that none of the trio take up any of the bottom three spots in Super League, wih the Giants, FC and Castleford Tigers all below them in the table.
Plenty was said in pre-season about whether the additional teams would be able to compete in the top flight, but the results have shown that they absolutely can, and their inclusion this season has only made for a better competition.
“I think it’s pretty incredible if I’m honest,” Haggerty said about all three being in 9th, 10th and 11th. “If you’d have spoken about this probably around round eight or round ten, then I’d have probably batted it off a little bit.
“Now we’re round 19 this weekend, all the promoted teams won at the weekend, who were supposed to due to fall off a cliff, and to be all out of the bottom, so I think it’s pretty incredible and probably deserves the credit it should get.
“It’s probably not been spoken about enough this weekend that all three teams have won, but I think it deserves a little bit more credit.
“I think it showed that we’ve got resilience, we might not have the biggest squads or the most highest-paid squads, but we all clearly coach well, we’ve got a fantastic group of men, and they all believe they can win each week no matter who they play against.”
The boss continued:Â “You look at the Toulouse score, you look at our score, we’re not just scraping over by one-point wins, so I think what the three clubs have done so far is pretty incredible.
“I do remember reading some comments at the start of the season, as I just took the job, that the Bulls would be lucky to win more than two games, so it’s always nice to change the narrative and prove a few people wrong.
Haggerty was asked whether defying expectations was something that encouraged the club to do so well. He replied: “I think in certain weeks you can lean on it a little bit, but ultimately it’s very much just focus on yourself.
“Obviously, you do keep an eye on how the other teams are getting on around you, but ultimately it changes that sporadically week to week that we very much just focus on what we’ve got in front of us, and not looking too far ahead. I think we’ve done that well all year.
“We never look no further than one or two weeks in front of us, and we’ll continue to do that until the end of the year.”
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Bradford Bulls boss expecting “David vs Goliath” pack battle
This week, Bradford welcome Wakefield Trinity to Odsal for the first time in two years, when Trinity took a 14-2 victory over the Bulls two years ago this week, in fact.
Since then, both sides have come on leaps and bounds, but what hasn’t changed is the geography of the two teams, and their locality gives this game that added extra of rivalry and bragging rights.
Trinity have already beaten Bradford this season, doing so in quite impressive fashion in April. Haggerty reflected on that game in his pre-match comments, and spoke on the changes the side have made from then to now.
“We had so many players not playing that game, we lost players in that game, we were very disjointed in personnel and positionals, so, yeah, it looks a lot different,” the boss said.
“We’re slightly healthier now in regards to bodies, not much, but slightly. They’re a fantastic team, they’re a very big team, they’re very good at playing the way they play.”
Trinity’s pack has undoubtedly been their biggest strength this season, with the side being able to topple almost any middle unit that comes against them.
However, Bradford’s advantage is that they have a smaller pitch than the rest of the competition, something that could work in their favour on Thursday night.
Commenting on that pack battle, Haggerty said: “It’s a bit of a David vs Goliath this week, this is the big men versus the small men, so we’ll have to see how the little fellas go.”
