JORDAN Lilley has been chosen as Bulls’ new vice-captain by Eamon O’Carroll, having been groomed as a leader-in-waiting under John Kear, Mark Dunning, Lee Greenwood and Brian Noble.
The half-back will be Michael Lawrence’s deputy, with the prop unsurprisingly named as skipper again after having performed that role in Bulls’ impressive 2023 campaign.
But Lilley has had a promotion, and he told the T&A: “It’s something I’m really proud of, both for me and my family.
“To be given that role within the team is really nice.
“I hold this club in very high regard, given how they’ve helped my family and I massively throughout my career.
“It’s an honour to be named as Bulls’ vice-captain and as someone who has always tried to lead by his actions, I’ll be looking to do that even more now in this role.
“If I’m going to talk the talk, I have to be able to walk the walk.”
Lilley is honoured to be serving under Lawrence, who also captained Super League side Huddersfield before moving to Bulls at the end of 2022.
The scrum-half said: “Bruno (Lawrence) is a real leader, on and off the field.
“He’s been in the game for a long time and been at the top level for a long time, so I’ll get to learn some traits from him.
“Being around Bruno even more now will allow me to see all the things he does and the ideas he has, and I hope to develop as a leader alongside him.
“I’m still relatively youngish at 27, so it will be good to learn from someone with his experience.
“He’ll have had a part to play in me being picked as vice-captain too, so that’s a further honour, that he sees me in that way.
“I learned off him as part of the first-team leadership group last year, but we didn’t really have a vice-captain once Bodene (Thompson) left at the start of July.
“After that, it was a case of Bruno putting ideas and decisions to a group of us and us all making a call together.
“I learnt a lot off him that way last season, but it should be even better with me being his vice-captain in 2024.”
Despite pre-season being less than three weeks old, Lilley insists the group have already bonded seamlessly, with new head coach O’Carroll and winter signings like John Davies, Dan Smith and Mitch Souter fitting in nicely.
And Bulls will need all that togetherness to overcome a hugely difficult start to the 2024 Betfred Championship season, with their first four league games coming against Wakefield, Halifax, Featherstone and Toulouse.
Lilley said: “It’s some start for us, but I love massive games like those first four, where you’ve got big crowds and lots at stake.
“It could be what we need, given the way we finished last season and only missed out away against a very good Toulouse team.
“We want to go one better than that, and finish as high in the league as we can, as well as go on a good run in the cups.
“Going to Wakefield and their new stadium in our opener, I can see that being a sell-out crowd.
“That game feels especially massive, because hopefully we can play like we did towards the end of last year, while adding those new ideas of Eamon’s.
“What better way to prove ourselves than against the title favourites?
“Plus, if we can get the results we’re after in the first four games, that will put us in a really good place going forward after that.”
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