Bradford Bulls will hand a debut to teenager Alfie Leake on Friday night against Hull KR with the club hit hard with another season-ending injury.
Kurt Haggerty’s side have 15 players out through injury with the latest being prop Jack Ormondroyd, who it has been confirmed will miss the remainder of the year due to an ankle injury that he picked up in the loss to Leeds Rhinos.
Ormondroyd was one of three Bradford injury concerns to emerge from that game and speaking to the media today (Wednesday), Bulls coach Kurt Haggerty offered an update.
“We’ve lost Jack Ormondroyd for the season. He hurt his ankle in the game, so he’s out for the year,” Haggerty confirmed.
“Jayden Nikorima is, I think it’s a reoccurring shoulder blade injury, so Jayden’s not as bad as I first thought. He could potentially be available for Warrington. He’s aggravated a previous injury.”
In more positive news, he confirmed: “Phoenix (Steinwede) is okay, he’ll go again this week. We’ve also got Jamie Gill, who’s back in contention, and Alfie Leake will make his Super League debut this week.”
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Bradford Bulls man set for second opinion over eye injury
Whilst Leake will be making his senior debut for the Bulls, there will be another player making a season debut as former Bradford academy player Thomas Doyle has been loaned in from Wakefield Trinity.
One player who could return is forward Loghan Lewis, who has been named in the 21-man squad, though Haggerty admitted: “I’d still say at this moment in time he’s probably 50-50, but I’m hopeful he’ll pull through in his play.”
Dan Russell was not named to the squad and Haggerty revealed that the second-rower is set to get a second opinion on his eye injury that has ruled him out in recent weeks.
Haggerty explained: “He’s got another second opinion tomorrow, so we’ll know more tomorrow but he won’t be available for this weekend.
“Depending how tomorrow goes, we’ll probably know more if he’s potentially available for Warrington. Again, it’s such murky waters because with the eye and the bleed behind the eye, we’d never ever want to put Dan at risk.”
On the fact that he has a whopping 15 senior players out, Haggerty reacted: “Yeah, that’s ridiculous, isn’t it? 15 players, it’s so difficult. Again, we’re pretty much missing our right edge with Jayden Okunbor and Esan Masters and then you talk about Rowan Milnes and you probably look at the first eight rounds of Super League when we were near fully fit of what we could do and what our attacking style looked like in particular.
“We’ve had to tweak things, we’ve had to play about with things. It’s certainly challenged my coaching in my first year as the head coach of this club. I’ve wanted to bring a philosophy of play and having to adapt on the go with such unprecedented injuries. So it’s certainly challenged my coaching at times.”
