7:10am Monday 8th June 2009
By Dave Craven
Steve McNamara admitted he wants to keep Steve Menzies at Odsal after seeing the Aussie star reach double figures for the season.
The second-rower scored twice as the Bulls beat Wakefield Trinity Wildcats 36-22 yesterday, avoiding a third straight defeat.
Menzies now has ten touchdowns for the campaign since signing from Manly and has instantly become a fans’ favourite.
Although he turns 36 next month there is no sign of the former Kangaroo slowing down and McNamara admitted: “He’s been very good.
“We knew he’d be a good player for us on and off the field but, because of our not great form throughout the first half of the season, I think he’s been a little bit under the radar.
“He’s a fantastic support player, knows where to be in the right place at the right time, is a smart footballer and has an involvement in a lot of the good things we do.
“Defensively he comes up with some ferocious tackles, which he showed at the end yesterday with a hit that finished the game off for us.
“We’re talking with a whole lot of our players regarding next season and he’s obviously an out-of-contract player so he’s in the mix with everyone else.
“Without a doubt we’d like to keep him. Steve knows the situation and we do and hopefully we’ll get something sorted.”
After back-to-back defeats against Celtic and Salford, McNamara insisted the Bulls would be a different side in the second half of this campaign. They began yesterday with a win that lifted them up from second bottom to 11th but McNamara wasn’t entirely happy.
“We showed some real ability and scored some great tries, probably nothing more than what we expected,” he said.
“I certainly believe the Bulls are just about to start 2009 and think it was a step in the right direction for us. But we’ve got to fix up a couple of simple areas. In the first half I ran out of fingers and toes counting the number of errors we came up with.
“We never did that in the second half and that made a big difference.”
Meanwhile, the Bulls chief doesn’t think Sam Burgess’ involvement with England in France on Saturday will be jeopardised after he was sin-binned yesterday.
The second row was yellow-carded for running in after team-mate Nick Scruton and Wakefield’s Jason Demetriou had come to blows.
Burgess could face a disciplinary and miss the international but McNamara said: “I think it was bit of handbags to be fair.
“I haven’t seen it again but I don’t think he (Burgess) threw any punches.
“I think he’s got involved in something and I’m certainly not happy about that – there’s no two ways about it – but [a potential ban] I wouldn’t have thought so.”
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