THE Bulls could have taken the Championship play-offs by storm.

That’s the biggest regret for John Kear after missing out on the end-of-season lottery by a point in their first season back in the second tier.

Part-timers Featherstone face red-hot favourites Toronto in the so-called million pound game in Canada tonight with the prize of a place in next year’s Super League at stake.

And while Kear feels the Wolfpack have been the strongest team in the division by far, he also reckons the Bulls could have made their own impact in the promotion knock-out.

He said: “Watching the play-offs does whet the appetite but there is that little regret.

“It is not being disrespectful but I honestly think we’d have given the play-offs a shake-up if we’d got through.

“We won our last four games and the two we lost prior to that were to York by a point and Toronto – and that was really by a point because they also scored with the last play of the game.

“We could have won both of those as well just as easily as we lost them.

“Add to the fact that we went to Toulouse and won and over the last seven games we were really growing as a team.

“That’s my little bit of frustration. The width of that post at York, which put their drop goal in and kept ours out, was the difference.

“Otherwise I think we could have been in there shaking some teams up.”

Featherstone have hit a rich vein of form at the right time to win on the road against Leigh, York and Toulouse to book their unexpected place in the play-off final.

The Bulls finished the season on a similarly strong run but ran out of games to overhaul the single-point gap behind Ryan Carr’s men.

“We would have gone in with a lot of momentum and feeling pretty confident that we could have done ourselves proud,” added Kear.

“But as far as personal aims go, we achieved our objective in consolidating back in the Championship.

“I think York over-achieved and perhaps ended up playing a game or two too many. They looked as if they were running on empty in both of their play-off games.

“It had been such a monumental effort in getting there that the petrol tank was simply drained.

“But I think it’s great credit to both of us how the two teams have done this season.

“York came up and got in the play-offs, we came up and obviously just missed out.”