An emotionally exhausted Steve McNamara compared his side’s 20-20 draw at Leeds to “your mother-in-law driving off a cliff in your brand new car”.

Deflated, yet encouraged, the Bulls boss had seriously mixed emotions after watching his players throw away a 20-6 second-half lead.

Lee Smith’s second try sealed a remarkable final quarter for the reigning champions as they scored 14 unanswered points to snatch a point.

It could even have been worse for the Bulls had Kevin Sinfield nailed the touchline conversion but that would have been extremely harsh on a team who had dominated the majority of the game.

McNamara said: “It never fails to surprise us, rugby league.

“I thought we were very good for large periods of the game.

“I do think it’s a point lost but at the end we could quite easily have lost the game ourselves.

“Kev normally comes up with his conversions in those sorts of situations and it’s been done to us in the past at this place.

“For a fairly young, promising side to come and perform like it did for long periods of time against a Leeds side that was bolstered by a fair few people coming back was commendable for us.”

There is no time to pause for the Bulls, who play again when Crusaders visit Grattan Stadium on Monday.

But, despite the obvious disappointment at the result, McNamara insists they will not need too much picking up.

He said: “We can’t start addressing it too much because we play again on Monday.

“The players understand. As a group we’ve learned quite a few things already this season. It’s been a good season for that for us and tonight was another experience.”

The Bulls chief was also left a little frustrated by the amount of penalties given against his team in the final quarter.

He said: “We got a little anxious and I think some other people got a little anxious that Bradford were in front at that stage.

“A couple of things went against us and we lost our momentum.

“Fourteen points isn’t a lot in rugby league when the momentum swings your way and it swung there way.

“I’m not blaming anyone at all, I think we should have closed that game off.

“But it’s been like that for the last few weeks where a lot of 50-50 decisions haven’t gone our way.”