Why Leeds Rhinos old boy's back to his best as Bradford Bulls coach reveals strategy to stop Maika Sivo

Andy Ackers played under Bulls coach Kurt Haggerty at Salford Red Devils before joining Leeds on a three-year deal beginning in the 2024 season. The hooker featured 25 times during his debut campaign, but was hampered by injury early last term and then struggled to get back in the side when fit, playing only 11 games.

He was released by Leeds last autumn in order to join Bradford and has been “absolutely fantastic” so far, according to Haggerty. Speaking at his weekly preview press conference today (Tuesday), Haggerty said: “When Andy is happy, he plays his best rugby.

“He is getting a lot of minutes again. I tasked him some things on his game to get back to what he used to do and what I would say is he is probably enjoying his rugby again.”

Despite the early end to Ackers’ time at Rhinos, Haggerty said he has nothing to prove this week and won’t be called on for inside knowledge of his previous team. “I don’t think he has a point to prove to me or to Leeds,” he stated.

“I just want Andy to go out there and play his style of rugby and put his best foot forward for the Bulls - I don’t want him to look too deep into anything. I am always very careful leaning on the players coming up against their ex-clubs.

“I never want them to focus on them versus the previous club, it is very much the Bulls versus whoever we’re playing. I just want Andy to focus on him and not what Leeds do and make sure he gets his job right.”

Haggerty has also revealed a straight-forward strategy for dealing with winger Maika Sivo, who has scored 14 tries in six matches for Rhinos, including three against Warrington Wolves last Sunday: stop the ball getting to him. Marcus Qareqare scored a hat-trick on Sivo’s side of the field for Castleford Tigers against Bradford last week and Haggerty said: “It doesn’t get any easier. He is another big body we are going to have to deal with systematically.

“We have got to do the work before the ball gets to Sivo. I am more than confident we will do our job on that right-edge. We have a bit of a saying ‘if we’re going to get it wrong, we all get it wrong together’. At Cas we were very individual, but if we are going to get it wrong, we get it wrong together so we have another wave of defence that will hopefully get us out of trouble.”

He added: “You have to turn the ball over on your terms. I think it’s where we finish with the ball, then aiming up defensively and being physical and making sure they don’t get out of yardage on their terms.”

Assessing Rhinos’ threat as a whole, Haggerty noted: “They are a very good team. They have some very dangerous players and they are good systematically. They play almost two styles of offense. They’ll have generic shapes like everybody else, but off the back of those they are very dangerous with the likes of Brodie Croft, Lachie Miller and Jake Connor. You almost have to defend them twice to stop them.”