Francis Cummins admitted his players had “thrown it away” as the Bulls slipped to a damaging 28-18 defeat at Super League play-off rivals Hull KR.

The Bulls led 12-4 in the 53rd minute after Keith Lulia added to Jarrod Sammut’s first-half opener but Rovers then took control following a number of costly Bradford errors.

Rhys Lovegrove grabbed his second try and replacement Lincoln Withers scored twice after Craig Hall’s breakaway effort.

Cummins felt his men had shown signs of improvement from last week’s Magic Weekend loss to Huddersfield but could not hide his disappointment at the outcome.

“We were in some good positions but I think we’ve thrown it away,” said the Bulls coach.

“Generally we were better than last week, which is a positive, and we had them. I think they (Hull KR) were really struggling but we made a yardage error and that got them back into it.”

Cummins said the loss to injury of John Bateman, Jarrod Sammut and Chev Walker had proved a major disruption to his side.

“This is no excuse but all our half-backs were struggling beforehand,” he said.

“We knew Jarrod’s ankle was a bit sore but he’s got a dead leg as well and had to come off. That’s probably why Danny Addy was on the bench.

“John Bateman had a really bad dead leg in the first half and Chev Walker had a bang on his knee and couldn’t come back on.

“It’s at times like that when you’ve got to be good with the ball and efficient but we weren’t.”

Despite the mistakes they made, the Bulls never threw in the towel and claimed a late third try from Michael Platt.

But for Cummins it was scant consolation and he said: “I’m probably sick of talking about our effort and character.

“We got ourselves in a position where we scored a really good try and I thought our goal-line defence was actually really good at times.

“The luck that wasn’t with Hull KR at the Magic Weekend (against Hull FC) was probably with them here at the back end of the second half with those tries they scored.”

The result allowed Rovers to draw level with the Bulls on points and Cummins must now rally his troops for Sunday’s trip to St Helens.

He said: “This was a big game and we need to be better against those sort of teams.”