'Real mixed bag' admits McNamara
7:17am Monday 19th May 2008
Steve McNamara reckons his Bulls side are guilty of "brain explosions".
They overcame Castleford Tigers yesterday with a 46-24 victory but had to work desperately hard against Super League's bottom side.
Bradford trailed twice in the first half, having gone behind 10-0 and then 16-14.
It needed a clinical three-try burst just before the break from Sam Burgess, Glenn Morrison and Jamie Langley to take the steam out of Cas.
McNamara said: "We scored some pretty spectacular rugby league tries but also really hurt ourselves with some proper brain explosions.
"It was a real mixed bag for us but I'm very pleased we managed to come and get the job done at a place like Cas.
"They have taken two major scalps here already and put us under pressure; we always knew they'd come out firing."
The Bulls pulled clear in the second half, finishing with eight tries, but McNamara knows they must shape up massively before the visit of table-toppers Leeds on Friday night.
"We were very good going forward in spells and likewise defensively too," he said.
"But at other stages we definitely weren't. We were up and down, something both sides were guilty of, but we have to improve a lot in time for Friday.
"We have got some individuals coming into form but we've got a short turnaround before Leeds so we're a little bit behind the starting blocks there."
Bradford were also forced into an early reshuffle when Chris Nero departed with a broken collar bone on 13 minutes.
The centre is likely to be missing for six weeks and McNamara admitted: "That was a big loss for us."
He had intended using Tame Tupou as a replacement prop but the big Kiwi again had to go to his usual wing position - like against Leeds in Cardiff - leaving the Bulls boss a forward rotation light.
Meanwhile, McNamara surprisingly left form player Dave Halley out of the 17.
He explained: "Full-back is a very demanding position. For a young lad, Dave's come in and done outstandingly well but he'd missed a lot of the previous week before Catalans through illness and looked like he was starting to get a little jaded.
"He was a bit frayed around the edges and you could see that in his training so I decided to give him a rest."
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