Prop Brian McDermott says Bradford Bulls are still on course to win the Grand Final, despite being beaten 34-26 at St Helens on Friday night.

"We have only lost three games so far this season, and we lost five matches and still won the Grand Final last season," said the 32-year-old former Great Britain international.

"Also we intend to have the best defensive record at the end of the season, because we know that whoever does won't be far away from winning the Grand Final."

While the Bulls currently have the best attack (528 points from 16 matches with Leeds their closest rivals on 522 followed by St Helens 496 and Wigan 464), they don't have the best defence.

Wigan currently lead that category on 255 points with Bradford second on 269 and Saints a distant third on 320 just ahead of Hull (325).

"We have had the best defence for a few years now, and we are very proud of it," said McDermott.

"We do a lot of work in training on defence, but it just isn't being borne out in matches at the moment, and that was the most annoying thing about the St Helens match.

"Every try that they scored was because of a missed tackle, and we were really kicking ourselves about the two tries that Paul Sculthorpe scored because we had been talking about that all week and it was a case of 'How did we let him score that?' when we were behind the posts.

"The good thing about that though is that they are fixable. St Helens are a potent attacking side, but it is not like they out-footballed us or anything."

McDermott, in his testimonial season with the Bulls added: "We came so close to winning it at Knowsley Road, and Mike Forshaw is gutted about his pass not going to hand in the 71st minute.

"He has probably been our most consistent forward over the past two or three seasons, and he is playing as well as ever.

"But we shouldn't be blaming Mike for one stray pass. We should be asking ourselves 'Why did we get ourselves into a position where we had to rely on one pass going to hand for us to win the match?'

"Now we move on to Thursday's home match against Widnes, which, like all the others, will be a tough contest."