Craig Lingard admits his Batley Bulldogs side ‘are just way off from where they need to be’ after a second successive Championship defeat at Sheffield Eagles

The Eagles soared to an impressive 36-0 victory, leaving a perplexed Lingard to say:

“I am massively disappointed. We are just way off from where we need to be at the minute. We are scratching our heads after the performance at London where we performed how we want to build as a team, with loads of energy and togetherness and effort-based things and we got our rewards on that day.

“The last two games we have drifted away from what’s always been us, from what has always got us success. We have rolled over too easily as soon as our backs have been against the wall.

“We have just cowered down and allowed ourselves to be rolled over which is very disappointing. It’s down to myself and the coaching staff to find out the reason pretty quickly because we have got another tough game this weekend against Keighley.”

Asked if he thought Sheffield were better in every single department, Lingard responded:

“Yes they were. They carried harder, ran harder, tackled harder, outsmarted us, outworked us, out-efforted us. In those non-skill departments, Sheffield outworked us.

“I was really disappointed with the start of the game. We keep talking about starting the game well and we conceded a penalty on tackle four in the first defensive set and then we conceded on tackle six in the next defensive set from the penalty.

“So all the talk about starting big and getting into the game, 90 seconds into the game we’re stood behind the sticks and it’s 6-0. It wasn’t the best of starts and it took us a good 25 minutes to go set-for-set with Sheffield.

“We repelled the onslaught which they gave us and did fairly well at the start of the second half in respect of going set-for-set again but once Sheffield scored their first try of the second half we just rolled over too easily again and it became an easy night’s work for Sheffield.”

The disappointing performance followed on from the Bulldogs’ surprising defeat at home to newly-promoted Swinton Lions in which Lingard could only take the commendable individual performances of Kieran Buchanan and Martyn Reilly as a positive.

Asked again if there were any positives to take out of the game, Lingard bluntly replied:

“No. The things that let us down the week before against Swinton were there again against Sheffield and a lot of it is effort-based. There is no way that we should be fatigued at this stage of the season.

“It’s making it easy for me as a coach to leave people out. I always say to the players that I look for reasons to leave people out rather than for bringing people in, and if people are giving me reasons easily enough then other people will get a shot.”

Batley Bulldogs will look to return to winning ways when they host Keighley Cougars at the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium on Sunday, February 26, kick off 3pm.