Jamie Langley knows the Bulls must use adversity to draw them closer together, not drive them apart.

Early optimism has been dented by defeat in their opening two games, particularly Sunday’s 38-6 loss at the hands of St Helens.

The nature of the loss to Saints proved particularly disappointing, as Bradford lacked cohesion and ideas, visibly shaken after conceding 20 points in 17 first-half minutes.

But there will be no time to brood. Instead, Langley has called on his team-mates to circle the wagons and draw on reserves of mental strength ahead of the visit of Castleford Tigers on Friday night.

“It’s awful, there’s nothing worse than losing like that,” said Langley.

“I’m as competitive as they come and it’s absolutely awful, you can’t put it into words.

“We’re going to have to pick ourselves up and, most of all, we’re going to have to stick together.

“It’s only two games in, so we can’t start feeling sorry for ourselves, we’re going to have to work for each other and it’s going to be a test of our mental strength.

“In the aftermath, everyone felt down but there’s no time to be deflated.”

The loss was made more painful for Langley as Saints put in a far from dominant display.

Despite turning on the style at the right times, Langley believes the visitors were still not at their best.

He said: “We didn’t look that fluent. We had a lot of opportunities that could’ve been converted into points but we weren’t able to take any of them.

“We’re working hard to improve areas of our game and hopefully that will translate to the pitch.

“Saints played well for a couple of periods in the game. The 20 minutes before half-time they played well and saw us a yard off pace.

“They weren’t that much better and I thought we still dominated long spells of the game.”