JORDAN Lilley has admitted he let the team down with his costly two-game ban and says that Bulls must use the horrendous Championship defeat to Sheffield on Easter Sunday as an eye-opener.

The scrum-half was not on the pitch at the weekend or for Bradford’s disappointing Challenge Cup defeat to Featherstone, having being suspended following a needless late hit in the pre-season friendly with Swinton.

He said: “It’s been a long four weeks without a game, and it’s felt like forever, as I’m someone who just wants to be consistently on the field.

“I don’t want to get flogged with a load of running while the other lads are playing, so I’m champing at the bit to get back out and help the team.

“I feel like I let them down by getting the ban. There was no malice in what I did, I’m not that kind of player, but whether I agree with it being a two-game ban or not is a different story.

“I’ve had my telling off from the coaching staff and now I’m wanting to do my bit to get us back to where we need.”

Lilley knows Bulls were miles off it in the 50-12 reverse against Sheffield, and said: “We don’t want to just write the game off.

“We have to use it as an eye-opener and accept that is what will happen if we don’t play to our full potential.

“It wasn’t acceptable. Sheffield were good and credit to them, they played some good shapes, completed and broke us down well, but there were some soft tries in there, which was uncharacteristic of us defensively.

“We had a meeting on Tuesday night, going through all those wrongs and the standards that we want to put out.

“It hurt to see the team like that on Sunday and we didn’t just let ourselves down, it was the fans and the coaching staff too.

“We want to get back to it in round two next week, though we know we’re coming up against a very good Halifax side who’ve just had a brilliant win over London.

“We’ll need to produce nine and 10 out of 10s all over the park to get something out of the game.”

The Fax derby next Sunday means we should finally get to see that much-vaunted half-back pairing of Lilley and Danny Brough in a competitive fixture.

Asked how he’d found playing alongside the veteran in training and in pre-season, Lilley said: “Danny takes a lot of the control and leadership weight off me.

“That means I can focus on my running game and taking the line on.

“I just have to run off the back of him as he targets the right men in the opposition and squares them up, making my job easier.

“We train in the gym together too and we’re forming a good partnership, which we’re hoping we can show in the upcoming games.

“I thought we’d started to look good in combination with the likes of (full back) Brandon Pickersgill and (hooker) Tom Doyle and we want that to keep happening outside of practice.

“I still maintain that if we can attack how we do in training, then we’re going to be a hard team to defend against this year.”