THERE is only one place to start this week and I would like to pay tribute to Francis Cummins and Lee St Hilaire.

Franny was fantastic for me – he held his hand out and gave me a lifeline when I left St Helens.

It was a great offer that he made and he really looked after me and was someone I clicked with right away.

You go through good and bad patches as a player but meeting Francis Cummins was a massive high in my career.

You would not go through the Bradford first-team and find too many people who have anything negative to say about him.

He’s a great bloke and I think one of his biggest strengths is that he’s a great man-manager.

That is why a lot of us were very, very disappointed when we went in on Monday to later discover he had been sacked.

It was a very strange day because we all went in to do our video review from Sunday’s game and Franny had mentioned he was going to see the board.

But there was no talk of him being sacked and we all went to Nandos for a team feed and then on the way home we got a text from Matt Diskin saying ‘I’ve just had a call from Franny and the board have sacked him’.

We thought it was a joke at first but then we realised it was true and a lot of people were absolutely gutted.

That shows how much respect he commanded after working for the club unpaid.

It’s a cut-throat business and, as a group of players, we’re very disappointed that our head coach has paid the price because ultimately we need to take responsibility for results.

Franny is only young and there is no doubt whatsoever he will bounce back.

He’s still hungry and the cream always rises to the top – it wouldn’t surprise me if he popped up at Leeds in the near future.

Lee St Hilaire is another cracking bloke and I would like nothing more than to see him and Franny back in the game.

On a personal note, I’ve been left out again this week, which is very frustrating, but all I can do is keep working hard to regain my spot.