John Kear laid into his Bradford Bulls team after they were humiliated by Sheffield Eagles.
The Bulls endured a horrific start to the Championship season as they were decimated by the Eagles, who scored ten tries in a 50-12 hammering.
Kear watched on as he was left appalled by the performance, and didn’t hold back as he lambasted their showing on the opening day of the league campaign.
“The opposition were more enthusiastic, the opposition worked harder, the opposition had a greater desire,” he started.
“That’s the reason they were coming through us. We’ve conceded lots of tries from distance and that’s just a matter of them coming through our defensive line and flooding through in support and us not being willing to stop them coming through the line. When they come through the line it’s like the white flag goes up, we’ll go behind the posts and have an inquest. It’s hurting a great deal, I hope it hurts the players as much as it hurts me.
“This doesn’t look like one of my teams and that’s my biggest concern. A team I’m normally in charge of enjoys the tough part of the game and enjoys the hard parts and are very rarely questioned about effort, well I’m questioning my players about effort, nevermind anyone else. It just wasn’t good enough.
“It wasn’t like one of my teams. It’s very concerning, we only look like we want to play the ball when it’s all fluffy and nice and passing. Well rugby league can be fluffy and nice but you’ve got to earn it to be fluffy and you’ve got to do the hard yakka, and that’s in the collision.
“The number of penalties we were giving away, the errors we were coming up with, it’s just not good enough. The whole perfromance has been diabolical, that’s the top and bottom of it. If you were marking it out of ten, we’d probably get a half or a one, it’s been as bad as that.
“The best player we had (Billy Jowitt) was the youngest one and the one making his debut because he was carrying the ball, challenging the opposition. Yes he made a couple of errors but he was making errors trying to do something in a positive manner and you can live with that.”
Kear continued: “They’re coming through the other side of us, that’s the top and bottom of it. When they get through they’re just supporting and we’re not willing to stop them coming through and when they’re busting us we’ll just go stand behind the posts and have an inquest. Well no, you should scramble back with an urgency and a desire.
“You look at the best team’s DNA, to score a try against St Helens is very difficult. To score a try against us at the minute isn’t. We’ve conceded ten tries today and we conceded seven against Featherstone. In two competitive games, 17 tries conceded, you’ve not got a prayer if you do that week in, week out.”
Kear, whose side conceded 41 points to Featherstone in the Challenge Cup first round, said the players should prepare for some harsh truths in the coming days.
“First of all, we’ve got to have very honest discussions amongst ourselves. It isn’t a matter of pointing fingers, it’s a matter of taking responsibility and accountability for our actions. Then we’ve got to look and improve training session upon training session and look to come up with a much-improved performance against Halifax in two weeks because I watched the Halifax game against London and they looked very good indeed. They’d obviously learned their lessons from Batley, we need to learn our lessons from this drubbing, this annihilation, from Sheffield Eagles.
“It’s probably going to be the two longest weeks of my rugby league life and their rugby league lives at the minute.”
