Ah yes, I hadn't even looked at that! It wouldn't be a fixture publish without at least one either wrong or moved within a day or two of the fixtures being announced.

Oldham at home for us on 12th Feb

Yeah we actually have Rochdale, it's just a misprint on that particular image.

Sync the fixtures with some calendar of your choice https://www.stanza.co/@bradford_bulls#/v1/

Sync the fixtures with some calendar of your choice https://www.stanza.co/@bradford_bulls#/v1/

Batley away on 15th Jan away, should be a good test for us.

Batley away in January? Thermals a must!

Don't really get the point of playing one of our rivals as a pre-season friendly? Perhaps nobody from SL or Championship 1 were available?

Should give us a decent yardstick of where we are before the real thing starts.

To be honest I'd rather we play the likes of Batley in Pre-season. It will give us a better test and besides, it's not like we can hide our cards and surprise our rivals on game day anymore anyway. £3 a month and they can watch all our games in full on BullsTV and analyse us to their hearts content.

Especially as Disko got a flavour of Rohan's philosophy so will include some it in his way of doing things at Batley, Last seasons match's will only provide some info on how certain players operate as individuals, the way the latest Bulls squad plays will be different due to the changes in personnel, The match is probably a thanks to Disko from the Club for all his good work, weather permitting of course

true but there's still another 4 competitive matches before we play Batley that they'll be able to watch online before we come up against them. Setting Batley aside a second, the same applies whoever our 'rivals' happen to be in a particular season. You can't exactly hide the way we play anymore unless we're going to mix it up each game or for a particular game. If nothing else they could go old school and actually send someone to our games. I think playing your direct rivals is Pre-Season is a better idea than just battering some team in a lower league. It give you much better preparation.

I think that's pretty much right.

In any case, you'd expect the early 'friendlies' to include 20+ per side with lots of youngsters included, just to see how they go, and many interchanges with maybe some players tried in less than obvious positions. It's hard for anyone to read much into the proceedings. For sure, you can try some moves out and see how [if] they work, but whilst coming out with more points than the opposition in these games games is always nice, it isn't the vitally important bit. I think also, that whatever "secrets"we give away by showing our moves and players to the opposition, we also gain by seeing theirs. It's chiefly a hit out and valuable simply for that really.

On reflection, I can see the argument for playing Batley, and if its a 'thank you' to Diskin, then that's cool.

It's not that I've anything against Batley, it's more that I got bored of seeing the same teams over and over this year - granted it was Dewsbury, Halifax, Sheffield, rather than Batley per se.

It would have been good to play someone a bit different than a team that we might play three times next season anyway. That's why it will good to have the game against Keighley - its just someplace different to go and watch a game.