JOHN Kear says his side surrendered to Leigh Centurions and showed a lack of defensive resolve in a damning defeat against their promotion rivals.

Bradford Bulls succumbed to their heaviest loss of the season, losing 52-20 in their trip across the Pennines.

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Kear said: “Well, I think the scoreline says it all, I really do. We had chances, we bombed them.

“But the most disappointing thing was we showed no resolve, no real desire, to defend when the going got tough.

“It’s really disappointing and I feel for the fans who’ve travelled over here. Because that’s just simply not good enough.

“52 points in a game against a team just before the game start two points better than us in the league, it’s just not good enough.”

He added: “We did appear to surrender and obviously we’ve got a character defect, if that’s the case.

“Because this is the second time it’s happened in the last four or five weeks.

“We seemed to surrender at Featherstone, we certainly surrendered today. The scoreline doesn’t lie.”

Despite a thumping on the scoreboard, the visitors did have a host of opportunities in the game, but just weren’t clinical enough.

The Bulls also usually pride themselves on their stoic defence, boasting one of the best points against tallies in the Betfred Championship before the Leigh loss.

Kear admits, it’s that and the particularly the easy gifts of tries in the latter stages of the game that bothered him most.

He said: “It looks like we can’t be bothered to sort of put our bodies in front in an attempt to stop them.

“It’s really disappointing and there needs to be some soul-searching by everyone involved.

“Coaching staff, playing staff and we need to come up with an answer pretty quickly or else we’re going to end up on the outer of what we wanted to achieve throughout the season.”

He added: “We’ve come up with errors that have bombed chances.

“We’ve come up with errors that have given them field position.

“We’ve come up with penalties that’s given them field position.

“There’s an instance there. We tackle Gareth Hock, he knocks the ball on, then we push him, why? I’ve no idea why.

“So it’s gone from us having the ball with a scrum to them having a kick at goal and two points. It’s just not smart.

“There’s an element of a lack of composure, lack of smartness, but more importantly to me was that giving in, that surrendering which appeared in the last ten minutes.”