As you might expect, Bradford Bulls boss Mark Dunning was not happy after his side lost the derby to Keighley Cougars quite comprehensively.
After the game he explained what went wrong:
“We’ve practiced all week and been really diligent, everything’s gone well and then we’ve not got out the blocks at all today,” he said to BBC Sport West Yorkshire.
“Early on in the first half we’ve made errors on play one, we’ve invited Keighley into the game. We’ve been out-enthused and we got what we deserved.
“The lack of enthusiasm within the group, when we got challenged instead of our actions being louder than our words it was the other way around. We looked for an easy get out and tried to play our way out of situations rather than rolling our sleeves up and working hard. That’s not what we’re about and now what we’d planned to be about today.”
He also addressed what he said at halftime:
“Actions have consequences and that’s what we spoke about at half-time. We spoke about getting into the arm wrestle because we never were in it, instead of that we chased easy points and looked for easy solutions and came up with poor skill and errors on the back of it.
“Listen we’ve had a good start to the season but that’s insignificant at the moment in time because to get where we want to be, and to be the team that we want to be then we need consistency as well.
“The fact we’ve dished that up on the back of a strong performance last week is pretty wasteful in my opinion, however good we have been you’re only as good as your last game and that’s clearly not good enough.”
Naturally his opposite number Rhys Lovegrove was much happier.
“Obviously I’m really proud, they stuck to the things we’ve been working hard on this last week and also the things we’ve been working hard on since November last year,” he said.
“I think they haven’t managed to hook it up in an 80 minute performance yet but today was pretty close.
“We weren’t perfect in every area of the game but that’s fine because the boys worked hard for each other, they grafted and they covered up those cracks with hard work.
“This has been coming as well, probably not the score line but the performance. They’ve been training really hard and dug into what we’re trying to do here.
“For the guys that didn’t understand before I think they’ve embraced it, enjoyed being uncomfortable and understood that and they’re starting to reap the rewards from it.”
