Eamon O’Carroll frustrated with Bradford Bulls draw

The visitors had to settle for a 24-24 draw despite having at least a two-try buffer in both the first and second half.

Unfortunately for the Bulls, they couldn’t hold on to what would have been an important victory in their bid to keep in touching distance with the Betfred Championship’s top three sides.

Speaking after the contest, a disheartened O’Carroll said: “It’s very disappointing that we’ve not come away with the win.

“I think, certainly in the last ten minutes, we were lucky to come away with a point.

“However, we should have never been in that position. 

“It’s a tough one to take and it hurts at the minute, but we can’t feel sorry for ourselves and we need to make sure that we put it right.”

Jayden Okunbor scored this fantastic effort as Bulls started the game extremely well (Image: Tom Pearson)

At 24-8 ahead with just over a quarter of the match to go, Bradford appeared to be in the driving seat and on their way to victory in Cumbria.

But their lowly hosts found an extra gear and began to punish Bulls at every given opportunity.

Reflecting on his side’s second half demise, O’Carroll admitted: “We didn’t make them work hard enough to get out of their own half; it was quite easy for them in that regard.

“Some of the tries that we conceded, we just needed that extra bit of effort to pick up a scrap or to close that line, but we just weren’t doing that.

“That’s really disappointing for me because I think for large parts of the season, particularly at the beginning of the year, we were really good at that and we had a great amount of resilience in our goal line defence.”

A peculiar incident occurred in the second half of the contest after Bulls’ Jarrod Sammut had forced a goal line dropout for his side.

From the resulting kick the ball evaded several Bradford players before hitting one Bulls man to go into touch.

Barrow scored from the following set, much to the frustration of O’Carroll.

He said: “Dumb is the word you’re looking for.

“That should have never happened and I think that it summed up our afternoon.

“My job is to defend the club and the team, but that was ridiculous and I can’t defend that.

“A team of our quality or any team in the Championship for that matter shouldn’t be having to deal with moments like that.”

Bulls fans travelled in their numbers once again, but they’ll have been disappointed with how the game ended (Image: Tom Pearson)

Reflecting on Sammut’s second ‘debut’ for the club, O’Carroll said: “He probably looks like a half-back that hasn’t had many training sessions.

“He had a couple of good touches and a couple of good kicks.

“The partnership between Jordan (Lilley) and Jarrod will only get better with the more practice they have together.

“We’ve worked really hard to bring a half-back in and we knew it wasn’t just going to be a quick fix.

“Jarrod is still learning about the people around him and that will take some time, but he’s a quality player and will learn quickly.”

Loan signing Jack Smith appeared to go off the pitch with a knock towards the end of the fixture.

Regarding a potential injury to the Leeds man, O’Carroll said: “I’m not sure what’s up with him yet because I haven’t had a chance to see the medical staff yet.

“I thought he did well, so I’m hoping it’s nothing too serious.”