Going to show my age, & my shocking memory now erm............... what was i doing? oh yes, think it was the early eighties, in the seabourne "era", might have been a stones bitter championship game or yorkshire cup tie at odsal against the mighty bramley.
Where to start, we had some line breakers in that side like aussie tear away 2nd rower ash lumby. Bramley were awful and we lost so you can tell how good we were that day, clueless with ball in hand and could'nt tackle a fish supper. Luckily it was quite foggy that weekday evening so me & the other 2500 brave souls did'nt have watch the whole unfolding nightmare.
Took all my reserves of idiocy to go to the next game & cringe my way through another 80 mins!

I remember this game as well - it was made even worse by the fact that I had paid to sit in the stand wasting valuable beer money in the process.

Like you I thought we lost but, in actual fact, it was a 20 - 20 draw. It was a second round Challenge Cup tie but we won the replay 36-2. All to no avail as the third round took us to the mighty Oldham where we we trounced by the improbable score of 6 -1. We had a poor side that year. As well as the aforementioned Ash Lumby we could call on the power of Brendan White, the blinding pace of Steve Parrish and the craft and guile of Heath Godfrey. It was also the year we paid a fortune for a certain T Holmes who managed to play a full 8 minutes for us all season. We did have John Woods though to provide a small glimour of hope. They would have been better spending the Holmes money on the rest of the Leigh team.

Ash Lumby. He was pants, as was his buddy Bob Kellaway. How come we were so hopless at getting Aussies and Kiwis in the mid 80s? Remember Basil Ake? We only started to turn it around with Mercer and Stewart in 87/88.

I played against Basil (on his debut?). I think he was probably better than all of our team.

Hmmm. That would make it into my top ten, or at least come close. Edge of the seat stuff and one of the very few times when taking part was more important than winning.

Having to watch an embarrassingly fat Owen Craggie run around our defence (twice) v e r y slowly as we lost away to Widnes in 2005

It was a funny game that day as we had gone in front then lost the lead again before leveling the scores again, before Widnes hit us at the death with that two try burst.

Very depressing journey coming home, although just five days later we would be going crazy at the JJB after beating Wigan 28-17 (coming back from 27-12 down with ten minutes to play). Amazing.

That's a particularly impressing comeback to knock 10 points off the other team's score

This is a cool thread.

One I remember was being at Uni in Liverpool, must have been something like 1981 - and setting off to get to Widnes to see what was a very rare game for me in those years. I had a nightmare train journey, and managed to not even get to ground until half time.

Frankly I should have turned around and come home, because I could see the scoreboard at Naughton Park, and we were already getting absolutely mullered (it was in the days of a really powerful Widnes team, pretty much in their pomp) Like an idiot, I paid to get in, and - sure enough - saw an abject second half of the Chemics coasting to an easy win and us trying to keep the score down.

I also remember a game against Keighley, probably about 1977-ish, where they came to Odsal and beat us by the unlikely score of 3-2 in a really dour and uninspiring game.

It's a pity there isn't a site which charts the history of the Bulls / Northern.....

Agree

I have a program card for the Castleford v Bradford Northern, Saturday 18th September 1926 game.

Truly amazing that my great grandad attended this game played at the Sandy Desert, Lock Lane.

The program card reads that up to present the newly found members (Castleford) of the Northern Rugby Football League have yet to win a game going down 22-0 away at Hull, 3-0 at home to Rochdale and Leeds 15-3.

How history was made then on the this faithful Saturday as Castleford won their first ever game and at home to boot by the rather impressive score of 37 points to Northern's 25.

It would be great to have a website that lists every Bradford Northern/Bulls game and result.

Maybe I should start it going as the various programes from over the years all have the results.

Ouch! I bet there's Keighley fans out there who still dream about that one.

Another possible one to mention would be the home loss to Leigh in 93/94 when Watto got (deservedly) sent off and the 2pts cost us the league title later in the year.

The 8-50 loss at Wigan a week after the 10-71 debacle was a depressing reminder of how pants we were in 1992. At least Leeds went there and lost 6-74 so we weren't alone in getting hammered by Wigan that year.

Back in the Seabourne era I'd say there were plenty of depressing games, barring that one decent season we had in 87/88.

Another one I remember was the traditional New Year derby against Castleford, must have been about 1976.

Castleford had Norton, Lloyd, Hartley, Lockwood etc - but we had designs on being a decent team at the time. Freezing cold, and I mean - REALLY cold - New Years Day, semi-frozen pitch and a a bit of snow falling

Resukt : Northern 0 Castleford 33

It took a while recover from that.....