CRAIG Lingard hailed the Cougars' spirit after they pushed Bradford all the way in a heated friendly encounter which saw two players from each team sent off.

Holders Keighley handed over the Joe Phillips Memorial Trophy to their neighbours following a 28-20 defeat yet the head coach was pleased with his side's resolve in tough circumstances.

Lingard said: "I'm not too bothered about the result – and I say this whether we'd won five friendlies or lost five friendlies. It's about the lessons that you learn as you progress through them.

"The positives were we showed a lot of togetherness, we showed a lot fight, we showed a lot of toughness and a lot of desire."

Ritchie Hawkyard received a yellow card in the first half and Samir Tahraoui saw red midway through the second, before three more late sendings off meant the game ended 11-a-side.

Lingard said: "For nearly 40 minutes, we were down to 12 men and then 11 late on.

"I thought our goal-line defence for vast periods of that game was very good – but when you are numerically disadvantaged, the pressure is going to tell eventually and that is what happened."

The Cougars found themselves on the wrong end of a 19-6 penalty count, which left Lingard puzzled.

He said: "I was left scratching my head. At one point it was 9-1 against us and a lot of them were for technical offences which seemed to get penalised, while we didn't get the penalties for some of the offences coming back the other way.

"But you have to adapt to that and for the amount of defending that we did, I'm really pleased with the defence for vast parts.

"However, we have conceded 28 points and some of them were from repeat sets defensively, which is one of my big key stats – how many scores you put on the board from them and how many you concede defensively and we conceded three on Sunday."

Tahraoui and Ryan Wright were sent off for their part in several fracas' which broke out during the game, with Ethan Ryan and Elliot Minchella seeing red for the Bulls.