WELL, I expected a tough game last week in the north East and we certainly got one.

All credit must go to the Newcastle Thunder team.

I thought they really brought the game to us and caught us on the hop a little bit in the opening 20 minutes.

They dominated possession and field position and went 12-0 up and we knew then we were in for a long evening and they didn’t disappoint.

We didn’t look after the ball and that meant we had a lot of defending to do but I thought we brought our ‘defensive’ heads to the game and defended really well. We needed to because some of our errors were really basic and it’s something we need to brush up on for this coming week.

It was a great occasion in Newcastle. The crowd was great, the pitch was great and it’s a fantastic stadium with good facilities and it’s always special playing under the lights.

I think everyone involved can take a big pat on the back; the Thunder club for marketing it so well and obviously ourselves for taking such a big following with us and what they saw on the pitch was a very competitive game.

It was the same in the under-19s game, which was played as a curtain raiser.

It was a tougher game than the final scoreline suggests; it was 18 all at half time and we just went away with it towards the end.

The u19s had to earn every yard when they were carrying the ball and had to work really hard to hold the Thunder back, so you must credit the whole Newcastle club for what they put on and the standard of play they put out there.

It was the Magic Weekend and our game was the precursor to what was a great two days for the sport.

That is something that we aspire to in the next few years as the Bradford Bulls but obviously job number one is to get out of League One and get to the Summer Bash next year.

We are concentrating for now though, on the job in hand and that is a very tough League One season.

This week we travel to Hemel Stags and they were well beaten last week but what we need to do is forget that result and concentrate on playing our own game and playing to the structures that have served us well so far this season.