THE Bulls let victory slip through their fingers against rivals York, admitted John Kear.

They suffered a second successive defeat as the Knights won 24-14 at Odsal.

It was another pulsating clash between the two sides who came up together from League One.

But Kear was frustrated at seeing his side’s mid-game comeback fall short as they gave away two more late tries.

The Bulls had trailed 12-0 but replied with 14 unanswered points through tries from Ethan Ryan (2) and Brandon Pickersgill to lead after 55 minutes.

At that stage, they looked on course to bounce straight back from the Sheffield loss with a third Championship win of the campaign.

But it was York who responded with two more scores of their own to take the points from Odsal for the second year in a row.

Kear said: “I thought it was a really entertaining game. You’ve seen two good teams at each other but unfortunately for us we’ve come out the wrong side of the scoring ledger.

“It’s a disappointing end, especially after we had clawed our way in front.

“The game was lost on the two barge-over tries at the end. We’ve already looked at them in the changing room and they were soft.

“Credit to the players for fighting back and getting their noses in front. But once in front, we should have made a better fist of our game from then onwards.”

The Bulls coach felt particularly disappointed after seeing his team work so hard to gain the advantage, having been kept scoreless until just before the half-time hooter.

“York are a really good defensive team,” added Kear. “Toronto scored 14 against them, Barrow didn’t score at all and Dewsbury got two tries and six goals.

“You’re not going to get a shed-load of points when you’re playing them.

“If that’s the case, we’ve got to defend better at the back end of the game than we did.

“We like to pride ourselves on our defensive efforts. For them to come through with those two from within 10 metres of our line was very disappointing.

“They weren’t intricate plays. For one they got an offload in when we should have wrapped the ball up and then the other went in from the play-the-ball.

“We worked hard to claw our way back and then let it slip through our fingers.”

York coach James Ford was unhappy with some of the penalties given against his team around the ruck – and felt the home team were “milking” it.

He said: “It’s the defence’s responsibility to clean out the way but it’s certainly not that easy to tackle a rugby league player. I do think that on occasions there were maybe some dishonest efforts around there.

“We’ve seen it on the preview and the same individual milking it and falling on the floor. That’s not rugby to me.

“It’s a game played by honest, hard-working individuals and we shouldn’t be doing things like that.”