JOHN Kear was left “mystified” by the Bulls’ second-half no show in yesterday’s win at Oldham.

They hit back from an early 10-point deficit to beat play-off rivals Roughyeds 24-16 at the Vestacare Stadium.

But the Bulls failed to score after the interval – despite playing most of it against 12 men.

Oldham, who eventually finished with just 10 on the field, still managed to score again themselves.

Kear said: “It was a really strange day. It’s absolutely mystifying.

“If you’d asked me before we came here, that we would win 24-16 I’d have bitten your hand off.

“But after witnessing how well we played in the first half, it doesn’t feel like that.

“At 24-10 after a really good half of rugby league from our team, we’ve come up with a second half that was absolutely shocking.

“All we’ve done is invited the opposition to attack our line, simply through basic errors. All the things we were so tidy at in the first half – it was like different people were wearing the same shirts.

“You feel as if you haven’t won because you are so dissatisfied with the second-half performance. We were good for 40 minutes – and absolutely awful for 40 minutes.”

Tries from Matty Storton, Jy Hitchcox, George Flanagan and Ross Peltier turned the game on its head before half-time. At that point, Kear was very happy with his team’s display.

He added: “We gifted them an interception and then there was a kick try. They weren’t defensive frailties that allowed them to score.

“I was quite content because I thought if we started to string some attacks together we’d be okay – and that’s how it proved. I was delighted.

“Then you get to full-time and it’s exactly the opposite. The defence was very good but we take that as a gimme because we’ve worked so hard at it over the season.

“If we hadn’t defended well, we’d have lost. There is plenty for us to look at and improve on.”