GEOFF Toovey admits that James Bentley’s Bulls exit will be “bitter-sweet.”

The home-grown youngster is today set to be confirmed as a St Helens player for next season.

And while Toovey admits the 19-year-old deserves his dream Super League shot, the Aussie head coach will be sad to see the Academy product leave the club.

“Firstly, it’s fantastic news for James,” said Toovey after yesterday’s 20-16 victory at Oldham.

“He’s a really dedicated footballer and he wants to go places, and I think that move will help him.

“Obviously, he would have loved to stay at Bradford but the circumstances ensure that option is taken out of his hands. His career path now lies at St Helens and we wish him all the best.

“It’s bitter-sweet for us but you can’t hold people back and circumstances favour him leaving, which is disappointing. Those circumstances are out of our control.

“He’s been great all year. He’s remained committed and I’m sure he will be for the last five games of the season. We look forward to watching him next year playing in Super League.”

Bentley was among the try-scorers at Bower Fold yesterday – along with Josh Rickett, Scott Moore and Cory Aston – as the already-relegated Bulls gave their fans something to cheer.

After storming into a 20-0 first-half lead, Bradford were forced to hang on for a narrow Championship Shield victory over the Roughyeds.

“There were flashbacks from the last time we played them here when they scored in the last 30 seconds to beat us, so I’m glad that didn’t happen this time,” added Toovey.

“Again, we started off consistently and fairly well, but in the second half we just fell into too many errors, dropped balls and forward passes. We let two kick-offs go dead and we’ve got to be better than that.

“I don’t think we realise how much pressure we’re putting ourselves under in the back end of games, because of those errors. We’ve just got to stop doing it.

“We started the game with a forward pass, then did it again and then we dropped the ball, and they seemed to get some penalties when we couldn’t buy one for a while.

“When you’re in the position that we are at the bottom of the table you don’t get those 50-50 calls, so you’ve got to work twice as hard.

“I thought our defence was okay – there were a couple of soft tries which is disappointing, but other than that I thought we worked hard for each other and that’s all we can do at this stage.

“It’s important they work hard for themselves and for the fans. They did that, dug pretty deep and did a job.”