ROWAN Milnes hopes there will be plenty more chances to stake his first-team claim for the Bulls.

The youngster was thrust into the action at Sheffield after Dane Chisholm was pulled out on the day of the game when his wife gave birth to a daughter.

Milnes was one of the brighter performers in the 24-10 loss but is expected to make way for Chisholm to return against York at Odsal on Sunday.

But with Joe Keyes still recovering from the back problem that has consistently been troubling him, Milnes is very much in coach John Kear’s thinking.

Read more: Milnes not just making numbers up at Bulls

He said: “As a young lad, you want to take your opportunity when you get it. I tried my best and came up with an assist for Ethan (Ryan).

“I was obviously buzzing when I got the call about dinner time to say I was in the team and I did what I could. But as a team we weren’t good enough with errors and penalties.

“Finding out (I was playing) on the morning is no excuse. We’re all professionals.

“It’s a completely different ball game in the Championship.

“Going from the (under) 19s to League One was more about the physicality. But the other night was a really fast game on a fast track and after the red card and sin bin they just wore us down step-by-step.”

Chisholm and Jordan Lilley were the half-back pairing for the opening two games and the Bulls had practised for Sheffield with the same combination.

But Milnes refused to use the late shuffle of personnel as an excuse for their poor performance last week.

He added: “I don’t think it was anything to do with it being Dane and Jordan all week. We all train together multiple times with different combos.

“At this level, you ought to be able to just slot in, whoever the player.

“Credit to Sheffield for turning us over. It was down to our discipline and some of our decision-making and the end to sets not being good enough.

“We’ve got to improve our discipline for this week. We were in the game going into the second half and could have closed it out but we were just silly.

“It’s a long season and we’ve got 23 games left and the cups. We know York will be tough but we’ve just got to stick together.”