BRADFORD BULLS coach Kurt Haggerty complimented Riley Dean’s debut – even if the halfback was less sure of his performance.
The recent addition from Oldham scored 18 points in Bradford’s 30-20 win over York Knights.
“Riley has not played at this level for some time but he’s still a very young man and has probably only had three training sessions with us,” Haggerty said of former Warrington Wolves man Dean.
“He’s actually very tired in the changing rooms now and is very unhappy at the way he played, although I thought he did some very good things in the game.”
On the team display, he added: “I’m happy as there were a lot of players who hadn’t played much rugby for a while, so it was always going to be scrappy.
“There were moments of brilliance but also some individual moments we got wrong.
“The game was very fast at the start which suits us but we need to be better in how we finish the sets.”
Haggerty was impressed with how his side handled Andy Ackers’ first-half sin bin.
“We are a very resilient team and when you lose numbers the (defensive) spacing is different,” he said.
“If we lose someone in the bin we are able to change our systems and that worked really well tonight.”