Heath L’Estrange believes the Bulls are ready to bounce straight back to winning ways when they head to Hull KR on Sunday.

The heavy Magic Weekend defeat to Huddersfield was the Bulls’ fourth loss from their past five Super League outings and another dent in their play-off hopes.

Yet joint-captain L’Estrange is confident that Francis Cummins’ men can produce the right response at Craven Park this coming weekend.

The match is shaping up as a potentially pivotal one in the race for a top-eight finish, with Craig Sandercock’s side just two points below the Bulls.

L’Estrange said: “We do need to make up ground. Our goal at the start of the season was to be competing with the top teams.

“We’ve done well against the teams that we should be beating but we need to do better against the big teams and we were poor against Huddersfield at the weekend.

“The last six weeks we haven’t been at our best. We have a lot of injuries and a few heads have sunk. We just want to get back on track and come up with something on Sunday at Hull KR.”

The 42-6 loss to the Giants marked the Bulls’ sixth defeat in seven Magic Weekend encounters dating back to 2007. L’Estrange has called for an improvement heading into the business end of the season.

The hooker said: “A few little things didn’t go our way but at the end of the day we missed our tackles (against Huddersfield) and gave them too much of the ball.

“I think we only completed one or two sets in the first half and it just went from there really. The errors crept in and we couldn’t force our way back into it.

"We weren’t really in the game for the most part. When we stuck to our game-plan and did what we wanted to, we made yards but then silly individual errors let us down. And on the back of not controlling the ruck, we lost our way a bit.”

Despite the setback, and Bradford’s poor record at the Magic Weekend, L’Estrange remains a big fan of the concept.

He said: “This is a great weekend and you can’t take anything away from it. We saw four great games on Saturday and the contests on Sunday have been good too.

“It’s a credit to the Super League and the RFL for putting something like this on because they don’t have it anywhere else. It’s an extraordinary weekend.”

Luke Gale and John Bateman will be assessed this week after missing the Huddersfield defeat, while Matty Blythe and Adrian Purtell picked up knocks against the Giants and will also be monitored ahead of Sunday’s match.

Meanwhile, Bulls duo Oliver Roberts and Nathan Conroy played their part in the England Academy side’s 52-28 victory over France Under-18s at La Reoule on Saturday.

The Academy scored nine tries against their French counterparts, with Huddersfield’s Jake Connor claiming a first-half hat-trick and Elliot Minchella – formerly of West Bowling but now of Leeds Rhinos – also on target.