""Northern win the 1944 Challenge Cup""
In a new three-part series, I take a look at the history of the Bradford Bulls and how the club became one of the true titans of rugby league.
Bradford's origins can be traced all the way back to 1863 and the formation of Bradford Football Club, which became of a member of the Rugby Football Union. This period saw the club play home matches at Park Avenue and also achieve a degree of success in winning the Yorkshire Cup in 1884.
In 1895, during a historic meeting at Huddersfield's George Hotel, Bradford was among 22 clubs which left the RFU and formed the Northern Rugby Union, which was eventually to become the Rugby Football League.
This period was a successful one for Bradford, who won the league in 1905 and the Challenge Cup in 1906, following this up with another Yorkshire Cup win in 1907.
However, the history books show that Bradford FC was to break up in 1907 as members voted in favour of playing association football rather than rugby. Known as the Great Betrayal, this event led to the formation of Bradford Park Avenue.
For a while all seemed lost as far as rugby in Bradford was concerned, particularly as Manningham FC had switched to football in a similar fashion in 1903. A minority faction from the former Bradford FC were to save the day, however, forming a new Northern Union club aptly named Bradford Northern, who would take Bradford FC's place in the league for the 1907-08 season.
After a year playing at the Greenfield Athletic Ground in 1907, Bradford Northern moved to Birch Lane in Bowling but the relatively small size of the ground meant that Valley Parade had to be used for big games and the club began looking for a potential site for a new ground.
The decision was made in 1933 to move to a former quarry at Odsal which was being used as a rubbish dump and the team played their first game at Odsal Stadium, the largest sports ground outside Wembley, in 1934. This paved the way for the club's first golden era, punctuated by the mercurial talent of forward Trevor Foster, arguably the greatest player in the club's history.
His 140 tries in 428 games included touchdowns in the 1947 and 1949 Challenge Cup finals, which Northern won on each occasion against Leeds and Halifax respectively, adding to their 1944 victory. Bradford also won the Yorkshire Cup six times between 1941 and 1950, but the league championship continued to elude them.
Other notable moments in this era included participating in the first ever rugby league match attended by the reigning monarch in 1948, the Challenge Cup final defeat by Wigan watched by George VI, while Bradford also played in the first floodlit sports match in the north of England in 1952 in a stunning victory over the New Zealand national side.
In 1954, Odsal Stadium also took its place in sporting history by playing host to a world record crowd of 102,000 to see the Challenge Cup final between Warrington and Halifax, with general opinion being that there were even more spectators in the stadium that day than the official figure.
At this point, the future looked rosy for Northern with the swinging sixties almost in sight, but within a decade financial ruin was on the cards and the club almost ceased to exist – a subject I will cover in detail in the next issue.