Bradford Bulls asked to iron out minor issues for York clash

Home defeats to Betfred Championship league leaders Featherstone Rovers (16-8) and sixth-placed York City Knights (20-10), with Bulls entertaining the latter on Sunday (6.30pm kick-off) in the play-offs, were followed by away wins over fifth-placed London Broncos (12-10) and fourth-placed Sheffield Eagles (17-16).

The latter fixture last night was decided by a last-minute drop goal by Jordan Lilley to guarantee Bulls third place and a home play-off tie, while consigning Sheffield to a home match against London.  

Bulls’ interim head coach Lee Greenwood: “We knew that the games over the last month were all going to be tight and separated by fine margins.

“We like to feel that we have built a lot of resilience into this team and character, and the last four weeks have shown that, even if we didn’t get the result in the first two of those weeks.

“We felt that we did quite a few things well and have carried on those improvements week on week.”

Greenwood admitted: “Some of the things that we did as a team (against Sheffield) weren’t good enough, such as going too close to the sideline, but we have character in this team and we showed that to get the ball back and we had a bit of quality from Jordan there to win it.

“Having these close games helped us and it will help us going forward but we cannot get these small things wrong.

“The margins get smaller and the more intense the game, the higher the rewards.

“The other team are probably working harder than they have done all season.”

Bulls were good against Sheffield, but there was still room for improvement. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

One example of those fine margins was Connor Wynne opting to run on the outside in the second half and getting shoved into touch, an error which led to the Eagles scoring a try.

Greenwood said: “If Connor had his time back again, he wouldn’t do that, but there were three or four men barging him over the sideline, which doesn’t always happen either.

“You have to stick to the lower-risk options sometimes when an opportunity presents itself, and it is a challenge to get a full team to buy into that.

“Going into these play-off games now, the team that probably does that the best will take home the prize at the end.”

The Bulls had five tries chalked off at Sheffield last night, with Greenwood admitting that he didn’t agree with every one of those officiating decisions.

He said: “The (Ben) Blackmore try looked fine by me and there was another one close to the line as well which didn’t look forward and the touch judge didn’t give them forward either/

“We got quite a lot of things right, especially in the first half against the wind, which we had to do as it was such a difficult game to kick it.

“In the first half we were pretty good and though we started the second half well, we then made too many errors of our own accord coming out of our half, which gave Sheffield a couple of leg-ups and a bit of energy.

“There are some things that we can tweak and reinforce about this performance, and we are going to have to be slightly better than that, but it is hard.”

Greenwood also confirmed that hooker Billy Jowitt had failed his head-injury assessment, after coming off in the second half, but that half-back Lee Gaskell had passed his.

The interim head coach said: “We lose Billy for next week after he failed a HIA, so it doesn’t get any easier, but every team has that and you have to adapt and deal with it.

Billy Jowitt will not be available for next week's play-off clash against York. (Image: Tom Pearson.)

“That is why you select a bench that can cover different positions and do different things.

“We just adapted, did the right thing, played alright in that period (where Jowitt and Gaskell went off) and defended pretty well.

“We certainly would not have looked back at that as a reason why we lost the game or even drawn it.

“There were a couple of things that were nothing to do with the reshuffle that we got wrong.

“Each week you lose one or two players but hopefully we will have some back to face York.

“We won’t be using that as an excuse next week if we don’t get the result, but we are confident with the players that we have put in place that we can do a job against York.”