Birmingham Bulls

Birmingham Bulls logoAs American football has become more and more popular in the United Kingdom, so too have people become more interested in going to see matches played live. This has led to further interest in teams that have actually been around for quite a long time, with the Birmingham Bulls being a good example of this.

Although gridiron as a sport has seen its popularity rise thanks to the National Football League games being played at the likes of Wembley Stadium and the Tottenham Hotspur Stadium, the Bulls have been around since 1983, making them one of the country’s longest-established sides.

History of the Team


The majority of people with even just a passing interest in American culture will almost certainly have heard of Howard Hughes, the American business magnate and film producer. What a lot of people might not realise is that Hughes had an indirect role in the formation of the Birmingham Bulls, owing to the fact that it was a former US military police officer and security guard of his named Jerry Hartman who helped to set the team up. That was back in 1983, when he used his college football experience as the springboard to set up a team in a local park in the second city.

It became so popular as to mean that a full adult team could be set up, with the decision being taken to name it after the famous local landmark, the Bull Ring. Local businessman Dave Gill chose to finance them, later becoming the club’s first Chairman and also being appointed the Chairman of the British American Football Association. The first game was played on Friday the eighth of June 1984, seeing the Bulls take on the Milton Keynes Bucks at Perry Barr’s Alexander Stadium, losing 40-7. Not long after, they moved to Salford Park and tried to buy land from the council.

Playing in the BAFL

It wasn’t long before the Birmingham Bulls were competing at the highest level, playing in the British American Football League and coached by Warren Tate. The first national championship was won in 1986, allowing them to represent the United Kingdom at the first edition of the Eurobowl, in which they finished third. Their second national championship arrived two years later, defeating the London Olympians at Loftus Road by a score of 30-6 so as to win their first Budweiser League. Again, they finished third in the Eurobowl, having lost to the runners-up both times.

Things did not go well for the Bulls in the 1989 off-season, with the entire starting secondary side being arrested on charges that ranged from assault through to armed robbery. By this point, the team was owned by a local businessman named Frank Leadon, who was an impersonator of the Hawaiian pop musician Don Ho. Internally, the American lineman James Thornton was regularly threatening to get himself deported, whilst Leadon left the team numerous times before returning. Partway through the season, Dave Webb, the father of nose tackle Andy Webb, bought the team.

Further Changes

Although the Bulls once again made it to what was then called the Budweiser Bowl, the coach and star quarterback, Russ Jensen, left the team just hours before the game got underway. The result was that they lost 21-14 to the Manchester Spartans. From a financial point of view, they missed out on a shortfall of around $100,000 when supporters protested against the idea of them touring South Africa on account of the country’s apartheid rule. In 1989, sports writer Michael Globetti from the Boston Herald joined the team and wrote the book God Save the Quarterback!

The Bulls won their third championship when it had been renamed as the NDMA League, beating the London Olympians 39-38 thanks to a field goal scored with just 17 seconds left on the clock. Three years later, more Eurobowl disappointment struck once again, with the Bulls losing to eventual winners, the Amsterdam Crusaders. They won another national championship in 1995 when they defeated the London Olympians 34-30, but a year later there was revenge for the Olympians when they knocked the Bulls out of the Eurobowl in the quarter-finals.

More Recent Years

The Bulls were reinvented in the middle of the 1990s, which resulted in them having to start the season in Division 2. Three years later and they were in the national championships again, but a defence-heavy game saw them defeated 9-6 by the London Olympians. They lost to the same team a year later, this time by a score of 34-26. What followed was a down period for the Bulls, making just one appearance in the championship, whilst local rivalries emerged against the Coventry Jets and the Tamworth Phoenix. A recruitment drive followed, but they still struggled.

They came close to making the playoffs in 2014, then a league restructure meant that the Bulls were placed into the Division One SFC North, seeing a former player in the shape of Mark Pagett taking charge. Another restructuring of the league meant that the Bulls were moved into the Midlands Football Conference 1 in 2016. They were relegated to Division Two of the BAFA National League system at the end of 2017. That led to the resignation of Pagett, which resulted in Matthew Sheldon, a long-serving player, taking over the running of the club in his stead.

After that, the Bulls were moved once again, this time to Division 2 NFC South. The regular season saw eight games being played, which ended with the Bulls winning seven and losing just one of them. The loss came to Staffordshire Surge in the final game of the season, seeing their rivals crowned division champions. In 2019, the Bulls managed a perfect season with eight wins, losing in the quarter-finals of the playoffs. In the November, the league was restructured once more, which led to the team playing in the SFC2 Central Division.