LEE Greenwood was delighted that his Bradford Bulls team did not become fall guys on Friday night at Newcastle Thunder.

The Bulls’ interim head coach watched his side establish a 16-0 first-half lead with tries by winger David Foggin-Johnston, half-back Tom Holmes and prop Jordan Baldwinson, with Dec Patton adding two goals.

However, the bottom-of-the-table hosts, who had only won one of their 12 Betfred Championship matches previously, scored two of the first three tries in the second half.

Sandwiched between was a Keven Appo effort, and the result was in the balance for a while, with the visitors having to show their defensive resilience as Newcastle attacked with purpose.

But, leading 22-12, the Bulls made victory certain with a late try by Kieran Gill that Patton improved to finish 28-12 victors.

Greenwood said: “It was all set up nicely for an upset – a TV game, big crowd (a season’s best 2,465 for Newcastle), the start of the Magic Weekend – and we have done well to make sure that that didn’t happen.

“It was a tough evening, and we knew that it would be. We knew that we would have to tough it out.

“Newcastle had prepared well – they finished their previous game against Sheffield very well – so they were always going to be confident coming into this, as you remember your last performance.

“They had done their homework on how we had been playing for the past few weeks and did a good job of negating that.

“What we have been trying to do over the past few weeks is instill some good habits into the team that you can fall back on at certain points, and I felt like we did that in the first half and looked good.

“In the first half, although we led 16-0, it wasn’t so much about the score as ensuring that they didn’t get that ruck speed up.

“Defensively we were very solid in the first half and I don’t remember a time when they should have scored.

"We contained them very well and could maybe have had one or two more (tries).”

Greenwood added: “In the second half we were really slow out of the blocks, and they came out really revved up.

“They were on top straight away and it was a struggle, and I am not sure that we would have won this game a few weeks back.

“Also, we didn’t get our ruck speed going but we defended solidly.

"They probably missed a couple of half-chances, but so did we and I never felt in danger of losing the game, even if it was not comfortable viewing.

“I didn't feel Kieran’s try near the end won it for us, as we had already won it, but it put a bit of icing on the cake.”