MUCH has been made of the new era that rugby league is about to enter, and rightly so, but spare a thought for Whitehaven coach Steve Deakin.

As the likes of Bradford, London and Leigh, armed with significant spending power and full-time squads, push for promotion to Super League, mere survival would represent success for Deakin’s men.

The Cumbrian part-timers’ budget is dwarfed by that of many of their Championship rivals and their squad is still not complete.

When the much-travelled Deakin, the younger brother of the late, legendary former Bulls marketing guru Peter Deakin, took the reins at Whitehaven last September, he faced a mountainous task.

Although the club survived relegation, a mass exodus of players followed.

Deakin, whose side are the visitors to Odsal in the Bulls’ first home game on February 22, explained: “Out of a squad of 24, 18 lads left and we were left with six players.

“Some retired and others moved on, but we’re up to about 21 players now and we’re hoping to have at least another couple in time for the start of the season.

“We offered contracts to seven players from the Workington-Whitehaven area during the off-season, which were refused for one reason or another, so it’s a tough gig.

“That said, we are only in the third month of a programme and Phil Veivers has shown at Workington that you can get a competitive team in the area if you work hard, stick with it, have a bit of luck and people buy into it.

“That’s what we’re hoping will happen at Whitehaven.

“We’ve got some quality players in the likes of Dave Allen, Stephen Bannister, Tyler Hepi, Ben Davies and Thomas Coyle.

“We’ve just signed John-Paul Brocklebank out of the amateur game but he will need some time to adjust to the intensity and speed of the Championship.

“If we can keep everybody else then we will be competitive – that’s the key for us because we’ve got the lowest budget in the Championship.”

The financial disparity between the top and bottom of the division rankles with Deakin, who quit his job as reserve-team coach at Catalans to return home last year.

The Lancastrian said: “I think this is going to be the toughest competition at this level for years with the teams that have come down from Super League in Bradford and London.

“Leigh have gone full-time and Bradford and London have both admitted that their squads are stronger this year than they were last year in Super League.

“There is a massive mismatch, not only in terms of players and resources but off-field resources as well.

“The full-time clubs have full-time physios and coaches.

“Although I applaud the RFL’s initiative with this new structure, I do think they could have made a better effort to equate funding.

“We get something like £150,000 and Bradford are getting something like £850,000, so where’s the level playing field?

“You increase competition levels with degrees of parity, not disparity.

“I think the disparity in this competition is greater than in any other professional sport in this country.

“I’m making this statement pre-competition, not post-competition, so we don’t quite know how it’s going to work out.

“I just think it’s a little bit like having a decathlon with Daley Thompson up against Peter Kay, in some respects.

“At the same time, I think the structure offers the likes of Bradford a great chance to come back up and Leigh have already showed their quality by beating Wigan in pre-season.”

The former Huddersfield, London, Cougars and Sheffield coach was a success at Catalans, helping to produce talented players such as Julien Bousquet, Morgan Escare and Eloi Pelissier.

His involvement at the Stade Gilbert Brutus also brought him within the coaching circle of the first-grade squad, while he forged a style of football that helped St Esteve, Catalans’ reserve side, to the French Elite Grand Final in 2013.

Deakin, a fluent French speaker, added: “It was my third spell over there and I really like the lifestyle.

“I actually had another 18 months on my contract but I cut it short due to family reasons.

“In the last four and a half years I had there, I think we’ve had 12 or so players come through the Dragons’ system and make their first-team debuts.

“If Whitehaven stay up this year, it will be a success. If we can get another two or three players in, manage to gel and stay in this competition, it will go a long way towards setting us up for the following season, where we will have a lot more continuity.”