Bradford Bulls boss Kurt Haggerty has confirmed that the last six weeks of his life have been consumed by recruitment talk with the signing of Wigan Warriors’ Sam Eseh for 2027 the first sign of that bearing fruit.
Eseh is the first signing to be announced by Bradford for 2027 but he’s likely to be one of several recruits, with Haggerty teasing that there will be a ‘few more’ players arriving at Odsal for next year.
Speaking specifically on how Bradford signed Eseh, Haggerty revealed that the 22-year-old effectively ticks all the boxes that the Bulls were looking for in their recruitment.
“He’s a big body, he’s athletic, he’s aggressive, and he’s young and he’s English. He’s everything we’ve been looking for so I can’t wait to coach him,” Haggerty said, confirming the club had earmarked the Wigan man a while ago.
“You get sent a list through of players off-contract and we’d identified that we needed to strengthen the middle and he was somebody who we went for straight away.”
Having identified Eseh as a candidate, Haggerty went on to note just how impressed he was with the Wigan man when speaking to him, speaking to his character before he even addressed any rugby side of things.
He said: “First and foremost when I met him, he’s an extremely polite young man. I couldn’t speak highly enough after meeting him and I’m really looking forward to working with him, character first but ultimately as a rugby player.”
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Sam Eseh the first piece of Bradford Bulls’ 2027 puzzle as Haggerty addresses squad-building
The Bulls coach also believes that whilst Eseh has been a ‘soldier’ for Wigan, he can become a star at Bradford thanks to the fact he would likely play a larger role with more significant minutes, and ultimately in the Kurt Haggerty style of play.
“He’s got a point of difference, he can break tackles and he can offload,” Haggerty said when explaining what makes Eseh such a prospect.
“I know it’s not something you might see at Wigan because it’s not their philosophy and style but in his previous clubs at Wakefield and Hull, he has got an offload and it’s something that we’d like to unlock here at the Bulls.
“I just think the one thing we could possibly give him at the moment is a little bit more game time, so we can put him out there a little bit longer and really study his game further, what we think we can help him on, but there’s just a lot to like about Sam.
“There’s a lot of coaching in him, there’s a lot of rawness about him, and yeah, there’s a lot of his game that we think we can help him with, and hopefully help him take that next step in his career.
As for the fact he’s penned a three-year deal, the head coach pointed to it as a marker of the club’s ambition and their desire to become an elite club as fast as possible.
He said: I think it shows the urgency to be successful quickly, even though we know that doesn’t happen overnight, but yet we’re impatient, we want overnight success, and we’ll do whatever we can to get the right people for this club to take the next step towards the top, but try and do it quickly.”
Whilst Eseh is the first of perhaps several signings, there are also plenty of faces off-contract at Odsal and whilst Haggerty confirmed there could be quite some change before 2027, plenty of the current group will remain.
He said: “We’ve got probably around maybe 10 to 11 out of contract, so it’s a big bulk of the squad, but I still think we did some pretty good recruitment in getting some boys on two, three-year deals, so again, it’ll look different, but there’ll still be some boys that stay on board as well.”
