Steve McNamara is confident his old heads can lead the way through a testing early-season fixture-list.

The Bulls face Super League leaders Wigan tomorrow night at the start of an important three weeks, which also includes games against second-placed Warrington and third-placed Hull.

It means Bradford will take on five of the current top six within the opening seven weeks of the season – a tough ask by anyone’s standards.

But they welcome the Warriors following back-to-back wins, including a hard-fought 7-0 triumph at Salford last week, and coach McNamara believes his squad have the experience and nous to continue grinding out results.

He said: “There is a lot of responsibility on our senior players in those close games to make sure we finish them off.

“Quite often as coaches we talk about performances being better than results in the long-term. In the circumstances and the conditions at Salford, the result was the most important thing.

“We needed to find a way of getting that result, whether it was through quality, through tenacity, whatever it may be - we needed to find a way and we did that.”

Despite persistent rain at The Willows, the Bulls halves continued to show signs of improvement against Salford.

Matt Orford impressed with his pinpoint kicking to relieve pressure at key times and Brett Kearney with a dazzling break for the only try of the match.

McNamara said: “Matt’s kicking game was great Friday night, it really was. I’m not sure our chase was as good as it should have been and that’s one of the things we’ve been working on.

“Brett has also been brought in to do those things when they’re needed and he provided a spark.

“Still, there were a thousand things we could’ve done better in that game.”