Steve McNamara didn't hold back with his assessment of the walloped Bulls, admitting: "We were awful."

A shockingly inept display saw the Super League champions dumped out of the Powergen Challenge Cup at St Helens on Saturday and the Bulls boss was brutally honest following the 42-18 cakewalk.

"We were consistent," he said. "Consistently poor, from the first minute until the last.

"We started bad and we probably got worse. But we just weren't poor in one particular department, we were poor in every department.

"Our skill levels were awful, our cohesion was poor and we didn't defend much better.

"Saints were very efficient and clinical in what they did and the complete opposite to what we were. When you combine the two, that's the result you get. It was a tough day."

The Bulls had fancied their chances of reaching Twickenham but went behind to a Keiran Cunningham try after 90 seconds and never recovered against their Cup bogey opponents.

It is the fifth consecutive defeat against Saints in this competition, including three finals, but the one-sided defeat had nothing to do with history, simply a non-performance from McNamara's woefully inadequate troops.

He immediately started looking ahead to Friday's visit of Leeds and said: "I will enjoy looking at the video because I want to start putting things right that we've done wrong.

"You move on. The players are hurting, the staff are hurting too but if you sit and dwell on it, you don't learn and don't move on. That's when it becomes a problem and it won't."

The Bulls were bad from start to finish as their buoyant hosts whipped up a 26-6 interval advantage, with McNamara admitting: "All aspects of our game was poor, discipline included."

Hooker Terry Newton played against Sean Long for the first time since the infamous meeting when the Saints scrum-half ended up with a broken cheekbone last year.

But there was only one winner in their contest as man-of-the-match Long ruled the show.

"Saints are a great side and we gave them too much ball," conceded the Great Britain star. "We couldn't get out of our half and had no field position. We saved our worst performance of the season for today.

"Longy is a great player and he controlled it all. He was awesome."