‘You need enemies’: joy for Super League as Bradford and Leeds finally resume rivalry

Heavyweight fixture that featured icons such as Kevin Sinfield and Lesley Vainikolo returns after 12-year hiatus

It will almost feel as if Super League has stepped back in time on Friday night as the rivalry that defined the competition’s early years returns after a 12-year hiatus, and it will not just be across West Yorkshire that eyes will be on Odsal Stadium for Bradford Bulls’ derby with Leeds Rhinos. In a small corner of New Zealand, Lesley Vainikolo will interrupt his Saturday morning to watch the return of the derby he starred in for Bradford during the early 2000s, and he will probably not be alone.

Dubbed the Volcano thanks to his incredible try-scoring record, with 149 in 152 games for the Bulls, Vainikolo rarely gives interviews these days. But the lure of discussing one of Super League’s biggest fixtures returning was too much to resist. “There is no way I’d miss it,” says the 46-year-old, who is now director of rugby at Wesley College near Auckland, the school that forged the career of Jonah Lomu.

“I’ll be up early with my Bulls shirt on watching it. There was no bigger game than playing Leeds back in the day. We treated the Rhinos matches as our biggest of the year: the battle to be the best team in Yorkshire. It’s so cool to see it back. I’ll be texting some of the Kiwi boys that were at Leeds who I played against if we win!”

For a time, this was the heavyweight fixture of Super League. In 2003, 2004 and 2005 the two clubs, split by 15 miles down a solitary junction of the M62, met in major finals. Sellouts at Headingley and 20,000-plus crowds at Odsal were commonplace and Kevin Sinfield, the late Rob Burrow and Vainikolo were among those to star in the derby.

They meet on Friday in Super League for the first time since 2014, the year Bradford were relegated from the top flight. The fixture’s memorable moments include the long-running battle between the enforcers Stuart Fielden and Barrie McDermott, Vainikolo’s try-scoring heroics and Leeds’ historic first title of the modern era, in the 2004 Grand Final.

Another of those men who defined the derby was the Bulls’ long-serving captain Robbie Hunter-Paul, who won nine major trophies with Bradford. “It was genuinely the closest thing you could get to a Grand Final,” he recalls. “They’re bigger than any semi-final you would play in; these games made you so much more nervous and excited. Everyone in Bradford wanted to beat Leeds and vice versa.”

The fact it has not been on the menu for so long could hint at the passion perhaps fading but to understand it truly, few are better positioned to explain the rivalry than Jamie Peacock. He was the best forward in the world when he captained Bradford to the 2005 title but towards the end of that season, it was announced he would sign for Leeds, his hometown club, in 2006.

“The backlash I got was incredible,” Peacock says. “There were loads of other players moving on but all the vitriol was directed at me, the captain moving on to their big rivals. I remember running out in my final games and there were cardboard cutouts of my face with a noose around it with the word Judas on it.”

Having gone on to dominate the domestic game with Leeds before retiring in 2015, Peacock is qualified to speak about the ferocity of the desire to win on both sides. With the Bulls having only just returned to Super League and Leeds now entrenched as heavyweights of the British game, there is a feeling this latest instalment may mean more to Bradford than it does the Rhinos. Peacock insists that is not true.

“They might play it down in Leeds this week but you need your rivals and you need your enemies: that’s sport. Leeds is my hometown club but when I played at Bradford, I wanted to beat them so I could go back to Leeds and have the bragging rights. They wanted to do the same. To have it back is brilliant.”

The importance of the game is huge for Super League too. Only four English cities have teams in the competition so to have two of them jostling in a heated rivalry is significant for the sport’s footprint at a time when it is trying to negotiate a new TV deal.

“These are two of our biggest brands,” Hunter-Paul says. “If you go anywhere, you have heard of Bradford and Leeds. Can you say that about some other places in Super League?”

Peacock agrees. “This game has huge cut-through on a wider scale than most others in the competition. It was integral to the success of Super League in the early years and you can’t argue the game needs Bradford versus Leeds.”