BRADFORD Bulls head coach Eamon O’Carroll has called for his players to hang on to the positives from this season ahead of the Betfred Championship’s final stretch.
The side from Odsal kicked off the year in fine form, picking up excellent back-to-back wins over Featherstone and Toulouse in April, suggesting this was a team with more backbone and nous than previous iterations.
A brave draw in Toulouse and a home thrashing of Whitehaven were two other season highlights, but it appears as if O’Carroll’s side have hit a plateau and are stuttering their way to a play-off finish.
However, starting this Sunday at Doncaster the Bulls have an opportunity to end the season on a high with six league fixtures remaining.
And Bradford’s head coach has urged his players to remain positive ahead of the final run-in.
Speaking to the T&A, He said: “If I look at the bigger picture, the number of players that we’ve used this year and the amount of adversity that we’ve had in terms of injuries and suspensions, we have to look at where we’re at now as a positive.
“We need to understand that we’re still in a good position (4th in the Betfred Championship).
“Of course, we’d like to be in a better position, of course we would, but we’ve got to understand that we’re playing in a really difficult competition and if you’re not quite on it then you’ll get burnt.
“This week has been good for me to reflect a little bit and understand that we’re still in a decent position.
“That could change, and things could get really ugly for us if we don’t sort things out, but we need to hold on to the fact that we’ve done some really good things this year. The group deserves credit for that.
“We’ve played a lot of the season with one half-back; we had a lot of disruption before we even started getting going but the team managed to get out there and get some real hard-fought victories, particularly at the start of the year.
“If we do our job properly in the last part of the season, then I firmly believe we’ll put ourselves in a good position and finish the season on a high.”
Jorge Taufua has received a one-game ban following his late yellow card in the 22-21 defeat to Featherstone in the Betfred Championship last Sunday.
He is available for this Sunday’s game at Doncaster but will have to sit out the upcoming fixture against Dewsbury next Friday at Odsal.
In one of the more unusual suspensions of the season, he has been found guilty of a hair pull on Featherstone’s Ben Reynolds, with the offence seeing him hit with a Grade B Other Contrary Behaviour charge.
And it’s not the first time Taufua has been charged with suspension this season either, with that outcome coming on two previous occasions already this campaign.
Giving his thoughts on the incident and the powerful winger’s misconduct in general, O’Carroll said: “I’m disappointed for him (Taufua).
“Jorge is a team first player, and he looks after all the boys.
“What went on before that was not down to him, and instead he was trying to get their player off ours. Our man was getting strangled on the floor.
“Jorge then reacted and pulled him off, which is just instinct. I want the boys to look after each other and I never want them to back down from a challenge.
“However, Jorge knows that he could have done something a little bit different in that regard.
“I feel for him but he’s an honest man and he knows that he could have gone about it in a different way, but I know that he cares about the group and his friends.”
Furthermore, O’Carroll said: “Jorge doesn’t go out the way to purposely get suspensions.
“He’s been brilliant for us, and we love him.
“Of course, he’s been upset with some of the suspensions he’s received because he cares so much about the club, but some of the decisions we’ve been scratching our heads at.
“Some of them have been deserved, but some of them haven’t and we’ve had chats about that.
“At the end of the day, it hurts us because we haven’t got the depth to handle these kinds of incidents.”
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