WITH the Bulls preparing for life outside Super League next season, we kick off a new series looking at how their Championship rivals are shaping up. We start with London Broncos:

London Broncos were rated as relegation certainties before last season had begun, so it was no surprise when they lost all but one of their 27 games.

It was a traumatic ending to their 19-year unbroken stay in the top flight but the capital club should certainly be far more competitive in 2015.

They will be one of three full-time sides in the Championship (along with the Bulls and Leigh) and their ultra-positive coach Joey Grima has presided over a major overhaul since the end of last term.

The former Parramatta player arrived at the Hive as Tony Rea's assistant in February before replacing him as head coach three months later.

"We've only got nine players left from last season's squad and have made 17 new signings, giving us a squad of 26," said the pint-sized Aussie, although new scrum half William Barthau is sidelined until April with an ACL injury.

"When I took over in May, our chairman and owner David Hughes made a decision to change the direction of the Broncos.

"I came up with a white paper where I identified eight crucial points fundamental to the success of a rugby league club.

"We needed to get our foundations right because we've been fixing things with sticky plaster for quite some time.

"The one thing I noticed was that there was no genuine pathway for our junior players.

"The coaching philosophy and ideology needed an overhaul and we didn't have any consistency within our programme.

"We're setting up our whole junior structure and, for the first time in as long as anyone can remember, we had a scholarship and academy induction evening three weeks ago.

"We had 73 letters go out and 73 young guys attended. It was a fantastic event."

Grima's biggest problem was changing the culture of a club which had grown accustomed to failure for too long.

"I needed to ensure that the players we were retaining and signing were going to be right for where I wanted to take the club," he explained.

"I concentrated on getting in mature players but in the criteria I also needed a number of fathers and husbands.

"As a father and husband, you have responsibilities away from the game.

"We needed to be sure that we had a good balance of experienced and mature players as well as our talented homegrown youngsters.

"We only had one person who was married last season and that was Matt Cook.

"That's why I signed guys like Richie Mathers, Josh Cordoba and Rhys Lovegrove – they are married family men.

"It's very important to sign good players and good people because I felt the culture and the quality of person we had here last season contributed to where we finished."

Grima chose not to sign Shaun Ainscough when it became apparent the former Bulls winger would not move his young family to London.

Grima was planning for relegation from the moment he took over and he has nine homegrown players in his squad – including the talented Joe Keyes, who hails from nearby Enfield.

Grima accepts that finishing in the top four is the least that London must achieve in 2015 as they gradually rebuild from the wreckage of relegation last term.

"I've got a two-year plan, not a 12-month plan, and success isn't always measured by the amount of china in the cabinet," he said.

"It's not all about where you finish in the top four – it's simply about finishing in the top four.

"It's very important that we make the Super Eights but I've got a 24-month programme in place.

"Also, if we do go up, what type of player might be available to sign at the back end of next year?

"For me, it's a 24-month journey – but you're talking about almost an extra £1million in central monies if we do go up."

Grima is assisted by former Sheffield player Andrew Henderson and ex-Leeds forward Danny Ward and has salary cap space available should he wish to bolster his squad.

He said: "We've gone down a division but I've got twice as many staff as last season. I'm happy because we've got 25 players who are ripping trees out of the ground right now.

"That's the type of environment we have created here now – it's chalk and cheese compared to last year. We're in a different stratosphere."