I played down at Dudley Hill for a few years as a junior/open age, so I'd probably start going back down there to watch again.

On the subject of the colours, while I was still there they gave away a lot of the old shirts when the kits changed. The ones I got were way too big for me so I gave them to my Dad. One morning he was out doing a delivery to the Woodlands down Oakenshaw when he was asked if it was a Rhinos shirt he was wearing. He turned round at it was Big Les asking him! I guess he lived down that street where the Club used to own those houses.

He was a character Les, used to have many a night with the lads in walkabout and les, big joe shontayne etc were in there! them were the days! We used to have Shontaynes brother Jarrod playing for us a few years back he could bang with the best of them! It was always good when family of bulls players ended up playing local amateur rugby. From school I played a bit at sedbergh in the second team, Vaikona's brother Wes was there, and Robbie and Henrys cousin called Reece came over for a bit. Bulls used to have a big presence in the amateur scene at one point and it died down massively. Dont know about other clubs but we are heavily involved with the bulls foundation now it just shows more hard work has gone on behind the scenes getting good ties with more amateur clubs than just mainly West Bowling to give themselves the pick of the juniors which will stand the academy in good stead in the future, which also goes to show how much work has gone into the academy and even more of a shame if anything serious does happen

John Bastian and his team have really done well in this regard. I could never understand why we had such an on/off relationship with the Bradford community clubs over the years. It did seem to ebb and flow.

Definitely there seemed to be a good connection with Bowling only, even going back a couple of friends of mine were made to leave us to go to Bowling or Clayton by the scholarship programme. John Bateman was even told to go to Siddal as he was playing a year above (and still the stand out junior in the country) but lasted 2-3 games and said sod this i'm back off to play with my mates! Its great to see the relationships getting stronger and like you say Bastian has a lot to answer to. Also another lad i Know who played this last weekend in the 9s tournament works at the Bulls part time and helps with academy and youve probably seen him on gamedays helping the first team with warm ups etc he says Leigh Beattie is also very well respected and will grow to be a very good coach

FWIW, when I'm off researching use of statistics in sports and especially rugby league I am forever bumping into Leigh Beattie's name. I believe he is either a recent graduate of a PhD on the subject or is about to very soon become one.

I've always thought the Bulls had a strong connection with West Bowling because that's where all the best kids were

To be fair not a lot wrong with that comment, they have superbly run a lot of junior sides for years. Out of interest apart from the obvious one being Elliott Whitehead and then theres your lad, how many bowling juniors are currently playing pro?

Ollie Bartle, Jay Panter, Matthew Storton and Jacob Trueman all from West Bowling in the current U19s IIRC.

The problem has always been the number of junior clubs in our area. A great success story is Keighley Albion which now has over 300 kids across all age groups. Running 2 teams at the 14's & 15's ages. 5 years ago they had less than 30 kids. John Bastian has been out to have a look 2-3 times this year already.

The u13's won the Yorkshire cup last month.

I was only pulling your leg mate