WEST Bowling have officially relocated to Horsfall, and have been given £200,000 to do so, having been the grateful recipient of a Rugby League World Cup 2021 grant.

Head coach Ryan Hunkin is delighted to have everything confirmed, with big plans in place for the community club to have one of the best facilities around.

He said: “It’s a game changer for us as a club.

“We had a nice pitch down at Emsley’s Rec, but we couldn’t develop the area at all or get a clubhouse sorted.

“This move gets the whole club in one place and stops the nomadic existence that we’ve had in the past.

“We’ll be training and playing there, alongside Bradford (Park Avenue) and Bradford Airedale Athletic Club, and we’re secured service users, which means we can have a direct hand in doing up the place over the next 35 years.

“A lot of work has been going on down there to smarten the place up, and long-term, most of the money is going to go on a modular clubhouse and changing rooms.

“We want a function suite-type facility where we can feed the players on matchdays and hold events.

“We’d be looking to build an extra four changing rooms, on top of the two in the pavilion, and we’d revamp those already there.”

On the pitch, and Hunkin admits the artificial surface will be of huge benefit to the club.

He said: “Unlike Bulls, we’ll be playing games on it, as well as training there.

“It’s massive for us to have a pitch like this, as it gives us consistency throughout the season.

“Grass pitches are not just a winter problem, with all the mud and bad weather, because some of the surfaces you play on in the summer are like concrete.

“Aside from the fact we’ll get a consistent surface all year, it’s a wide pitch too, which suits the style of play we’re trying to implement from the juniors upwards.

“We want to play attractive rugby, using the ball and being more speedy with it, which we can do on here.”

Hopefully, we will see that way of playing soon, with rugby league teams allowed to return to training from the end of this month.

Hunkin said: “We’ll probably look at having a couple of teams training on March 29 itself, then the majority in on the Tuesday and Thursday as usual.

“We’d like to get the whole club down there in that first week.

“We’re still waiting to find out what the season will look like, and what the training and playing protocols will be.

“It might still have to be socially distanced for now and it may be that we can only start off doing conditioning work, without rugby balls really being involved.”

Hunkin added: “Everyone involved in community rugby league can’t wait for it to come back.

“It’s not even necessarily the playing side of things, it’s just the thought of seeing everyone again and having that bit of banter we’ve been missing.

“We’ve all been massively missing out on that and it’s been a tough lockdown for everyone. We can’t wait to be back.”

Applications for the Rugby League World Cup grants are open until April 30, and you can find out more here.