JIMMY Lowes watched the Bulls get battered by Wakefield and then declared: It’s how we respond to this now.

A nightmare afternoon at Belle Vue saw Lowes’ men lose 48-18 with star man Lee Gaskell taken to hospital with a back injury.

The stand-off suffered bruising to his back after colliding with a post early on but the Bulls say Gaskell could be passed fit to face Salford on Sunday.

Matt Ryan, meanwhile, will undergo a scan today to reveal the full extent of a suspected shoulder injury which forced him off in the closing stages.

Wakefield have been Super League’s whipping boys this season but head coach Lowes admitted: “In the Championship you can get away with some of the stuff we dished up but you can’t at this level.

“You saw signs of what we are capable of, but also signs of what can happen when we play like that against Super League opposition.

“It’s not the end of the world – we’ve got five more games and there are a few teams on two points.

“It’s game on and how we respond to this now – and we need to be good with that response.

"Yes, we’re disappointed because we were poor but we are still on two points like Wakefield.”

A horror start cost the Bulls dear as Wakefield, buoyed by a dominant pack and the class of playmaker Tim Smith, raced into a 30-0 lead with little more than 25 minutes played.

Lowes, who confirmed new signing Dane Nielsen will make his debut at home to Salford on Sunday, said: “We lost the game and we were terrible in that first half but the whole world does not crumble in just because we have played poorly for forty minutes.

“We did some stuff in the second half and got ourselves in a position where we could potentially challenge them.

“I showed the lads a clip of that afterwards, so there is no change of philosophies at all and my opinions on rugby don’t change.

“The stuff we had talked about doing, we didn’t do in the first half and we never delivered.

“We needed to find a way of stopping them and we did not – you can’t legislate for a start like that.

“We have got a lot of work to do but I have been beaten before.

“I am not giving up on these players because I have seen signs today of what we can do.”