Championship: Bradford coach James Lowes looking forward to the new season
Wednesday 31 December 2014 18:40, UK
James Lowes is looking forward to the challenge of trying to get the Bradford Bulls back into the Super League at the first time of asking.
Lowes arrived too late in the 2014 season to save the Bulls, who suffered another year of financial misery, from relegation but he has been busy over the winter in rebuilding their squad for life in the Championship.
With 15 players having left Odsal, and 10 coming in, Lowes is putting down a blueprint to get Bradford back into the top division, even though he feels the new rules will make things tough for teams to progress.
The licensing process for Super League is no more, and the bottom four teams will join the top four from the Championship after 23 rounds in a new 'Elite 8' division to decide four Super League places for 2016.
But Lowes is feeling positive and cannot wait for the season to start, as he told the Yorkshire Post: “Every season offers a fresh challenge regardless of who you are or where you are.
Pitfalls
"As for whether we can go straight back up, with all the pitfalls the RFL have put in place it is obviously a tough ask given the way the salary cap is organised, to getting fewer home games when it comes to that play-off time.
"I don’t know why they’ve stacked all the odds against the Championship teams but we’ll see. It’s an interesting case with the restructure. Will it benefit the top league or England national side? I doubt it very much."
While Lowes would love to engineer a quick return to Super League for the once-great Bulls - they last won the Grand Final in 2005 - he is not under any pressure from owner Marc Green to do so.
He added: "We have a plan. We’ve set goals but there’s no great pressure on me to get Bradford up this season.
"We’ll do our best and if it’s not good enough I’m sure someone will step in instead. But there’s no pressure on me to get it done immediately.
"Everyone wants to play now but, even with friendlies coming up, I don’t think you ever start a season at 100 per cent.
"You fine-tune as you go on. Hopefully, your best performances come in the play-offs. That’s when you need to peak. Everybody looks good at training and are ripping in but it’s all about playing so we’ll see then."
