Bradford Bulls head coach pulls no punches after awful loss

After admitting several individuals were not at the races, he also pondered whether some may have allowed complacency to creep into their performance, given fifth-placed Bulls had just crushed Keighley eight days earlier while the sliding Vikings had lost five in a row.

Asked if Bulls’ players went into the game thinking all they had to do was turn up and win, Greenwood told the T&A: “You might be on to something with that.

“It was nothing that we spoke about as a group during the week, as we took on a lot of things we could work on from the Keighley game, even though it was a comfortable victory.

“But if there were some individuals that were thinking it’d be an easy day at the office for them to score a couple of tries then maybe that showed in their performances.

“It’s our job as coaches to make sure that doesn’t happen again. We can use this as a lesson, so the next time we’re in this sort of situation after a good win, we can use this and remember what happened tonight. “

Greenwood was unimpressed with Bulls’ constant ill-discipline and errors, with several of Widnes’ points handed to them on a plate.

He said: “Widnes had a lot more attacking sets than us and they’re a good attacking team.

“But we kept inviting them in to score points far too often with our own discipline and errors and they took advantage of us being really poor.

A Ben Blackmore error gifted Widnes their first try, and it was not his only error of the night either. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“We weren’t good enough, we were way off, and this was probably the first game under Brian and I where we were expected to win and we haven’t.

“We’ve got to learn from this one, as we did from last week’s win over Keighley.

“Nothing’s really changed so much in the league table, even if we’d have liked to have moved two points further clear of a couple of teams.

“But it was a lesson there, that if you’re under par in this division, you’ll get beaten.

“We didn’t deserve anything, we didn’t even string a patch of three good minutes together tonight, which is the biggest disappointment.

“We might have come here, played well, and still lost.

“But it’s the performance we’re most disappointed in, as that’s the poorest we’ve been since Brian and I took charge.”

James Segeyaro has largely looked a cut above since joining Bulls, but even he could not inspire his team last night. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

A couple of controversial calls did go against Bradford during the game though, with a seemingly blatant knock-on by Widnes missed moments before the break, allowing the hosts to advance up the field, and win a penalty they scored from, from which Lee Gaskell was yellow carded.

There were other harsh penalties against them, such as a monster Jorge Taufua tackle that was deemed a foul, while Ben Blackmore was deemed to have failed to ground the ball when a converted try at that point would have levelled the scores.

But Greenwood said: “There was loads we could feel hard done by, but we can’t blame that for the result.

“We’ve given the referee the chance to give some of those decisions, and when I look back, there’ll be some I’ll feel have gone for us and some against us.

“But we need to be miles better than that. If we were a lot better in the contact area and at not making errors, the referee’s not even a conversation.

“It’s because of our performance that we’re even talking about the ref.”

On the injury front, Gaskell passed his HIA after cutting his head open, but Connor Wynne appeared to do damage to his shoulder or collarbone late on, with Greenwood waiting to see the extent of that injury, while he fears that Joe Arundel may have torn his calf.

Greenwood admitted that they were short on numbers in certain positions, especially in the middle, so will see what they can do in terms of personnel heading to Whitehaven.