The badly-shaken Bulls will take a first genuine step to defending their Super League crown tonight.

That may seem a little late in the day given the home match with Salford City Reds is round three of the competition.

The Bulls have already won at Wakefield and drawn with Harlequins but Mick Withers believes they have only been treading water.

Both displays, especially the mistake-ridden Quins horror, were unconvincing and the full back realises the champions can no longer stumble through.

"We've been ordinary so far - bad against Quins - and we need to put that right, start

getting the consistency and stir ourselves up," said the Bradford full back.

"We're not playing well but we're still

picking up points so that's a good sign. But we have yet to click and we've got five or six

really hard games coming up.

"Confidence needs to be high for those matches and it starts tonight."

With a trip to France next Saturday, quickly followed by clashes against Hull, Saints, Wigan, Warrington and Leeds, the Bulls need to be finding their form.

Withers reminds the knockers that they are three points better off than this time last year, when the Bulls had lost both their first two matches.

But the consumate professional concedes it isn't good enough and Salford - coached by former Bulls Karl Harrison, Jimmy Lowes and Scott Naylor - will make them pay for any further sloppiness.

"They are going really well and with all three of their coaching staff being from Bradford they know all about us," added the Aussie.

On a personal front, Withers is desperate to banish the memory of his nightmare against Quins, when he dropped two simple passes and missed some vital tackles.

"It's the first time I've got a five out of ten in the T&A," he said, "but I deserved it. I don't normally make those sorts of errors so to do it twice identically was weird.

"My head dropped and I couldn't recover. I felt disappointed that I was letting the team down, especially as they scored off the back of one of them.

"I was kicking myself. Now I just want to get back out there and put it right."