SO what started the decline of the once-great Bradford Bulls?

Some may point the finger at Iestyn Harris, whose signing in 2004 cost them £550,000 as Leeds Rhinos should have had the first option when the Welshman left Cardiff Blues.

However, Bulls legend Leon Pryce in his book Pryceless, which was launched today, says that it is an over simplification to blame the Harris situation.

Pryce, who feels that the time is now right to have his say, writes: “Essentially, I think it’s important to point out that, in my opinion at least, it wasn’t just one thing that people always refer to why it went belly up.

“The whole demise of the Bradford Bulls revolves around a couple of key areas.

“The first for me was that, from the outside looking in, we simply stopped giving the players like Ryan Atkins and Chris Bridge a chance to prosper, where others had been given the opportunity in the past and taken it with both hands.

“We let myself go, we let Stuart Reardon go, Karl (Pryce) went to union and there were so many – Brett Ferres was another, Stuart Fielden went to Wigan, Rob Parker went to Salford, Lee Radford went to Hull.

“There were a number of names there who have since gone on and had good careers in one way or another. We were signing players who were coming in at the back end of their careers who maybe had one or two years left in them.

“We let good, promising kids go as a result of that because they didn’t have an opportunity to get into the first team, and some of them ended up becoming future internationals for England.

“This for me was the biggest reason why the Bulls went downhill.

“We signed Iestyn Harris when we did – and I want to make it clear that Iestyn is a great friend of mine and I’ve still got a good relationship with him to this day.

“Sometimes his name gets thrown at the wall as the sole reason when it really shouldn’t do.

“The situation was this: we signed him knowing the legal situation behind it, and when you do that, and know that he may cost you hundreds of thousands of pounds of it all goes wrong, the club only has themselves to blame doesn’t it?

“It’s not Iestyn’s fault, it’s whoever made that decision.

“I don’t know the intricacies of it, but it’s common knowledge that it cost the club a small fortune when it went through the courts.”

However, Pryce does not feel that letting youngsters go or gambling on the Harris court case were the biggest factors in the club’s decline.

In his eyes that was simply letting Jamie Peacock sign for Leeds.

“How was this allowed to happen?” writes Pryce.

“We had a captain who could have led the Bulls for the next ten years given the right contract being put on the table.

“Look at what he did after leaving Bradford at the end of 2005?

“He dominated the sport and, in hindsight, he still had the best years to come. It’s an incredible decision, a staggering one.

“My opinion as a player and a fan was that it was the biggest regret the Bulls should have.

“I’m not too sure if he definitely wanted to go to Leeds – I know it was his home-town club – but if we had offered him the contract that he deserved and he perhaps wanted to stay at Bradford, he would hopefully taken it and signed on again.”

Letting players go was a theme that repeated itself, and Pryce added: “The starting pack for England in the Four Nations in 2016 would have included people like Brett Ferres, Elliott Whitehead, John Batesman, the Burgess brothers – who, admittedly, would have probably still gone to the NFL – but it’s still frightening to think they were all at Bradford at one time or another.”

Pryce also covers his return to the Bulls – and how rightly indignant he was that players were finding out things from social media rather than being told first hand – and his court case for unlawful wounding in which he was so convinced that he was going to prison that he had his washbag under his arm at sentencing in readiness.

On his second career with the Bulls, Pryce wrote: “I had no idea that anything was wrong before I started, but after the very first field session we did with me back as a Bradford Bulls player, we came off the field having trained at Bradford Academy and I got in my car and there were a few missed calls from people, as well as a few messages.

“I went onto Twitter and scrolled down and saw a tweet saying Bradford Bulls were going into administration.

“We demanded to see Marc Green because the way we found out – via Twitter – was pretty disgraceful if I’m being honest.

“Imagine being in another walk of life and finding out that your job is in jeopardy on the strength of what you see on social media.

“It was laughable really.”

Pryce, who reveals how crucial the late Debbie Charlton was to the Bulls’ success in her role as Mother Hen and how St Helens coach Daniel Anderson was vital to Pryce’s development, admitted that it took him over a decade to get over the court case (until he went to Catalans).

But essentially Pryceless is about a very talented rugby-mad youngster who was surrounded by love and made his way to the top of the tree from humble surroundings in West Bowling.

BILL MARSHALL