Potter in rush to work on defence

Mick Potter is keen to tighten up his Bulls backline
5 June 2012

Bradford coach Mick Potter will look to work on his side's defence "as a matter of urgency" as they follow up a 46-32 victory over Castleford with another tough game at St Helens before the end of the week.

The Bulls coach watched his injury-weakened side move back into the top eight play-off places in the Stobart Super League by leading throughout to come out on top in 14-try points bonanza at Odsal.

He said: "I was happy with our first-half performance although I probably wasn't happy with some of the defensive things we did."

Bradford carved out a 34-10 first-half lead before three tries either side of the interval hauled the tenacious Tigers back in to contention - twice coming within eight points of their hosts before Ainscough's final score, five minutes from time, wrapped up the win.

Victory sees them leapfrog over Leeds and ejects the 2011 Grand Final winners from the top eight, albeit with the Rhinos still having a game in hand of most of their rivals. Potter emerged satisfied but wary of the threat posed by St Helens in just four days time.

He added: "[The defensive situation] needs to be addressed with a matter of urgency, although we haven't got much time given that we have the St Helens game on Friday.

"We'll probably have a look at the video but won't get time to do too much about it - the turnaround is just too short. There are some things to address and we are coming up against a team (St Helens) who can play a lot of rugby and can put a lot of points on you. It was good for the fans but for the purist it wasn't."

Tigers boss Ian Millward acknowledged his team's gutsy second half display but added: "It's a game of two halves and I was fairly disappointed with our points leaking in the first half.

"We are an inconsistent team and our completion rate in the first half was about 70% while they were at 85%. When I took over this club we averaged over 30 points a game against and that hasn't changed.

"I want to let the fans know we are working very hard on that part of our game. We got back in the game and won the second half 16-10 but that begs the question why wasn't it a 16-10 scoreline in the first half?"

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