Dewsbury Rams 16 Bradford Bulls 46
On a day when almost 100 former Dewsbury players graced the turf at the Tetley’s stadium, hopes were high for the opening game of the BetFred Championship season against Bradford Bulls.
Unfortunately the Rams didn’t get off to the best of starts and John Kear’s Bulls took full control from the start. The Rams did have some good spells during the match but it was the errors from the home side that gifted the visitors field position from which they were able to press home their advantage.
Matty Dawson-Jones was first in for Bradford. After an earlier knock on from the home side, a clever grubber kick through to the corner sent in Jones.
Errors continued to come for the Rams, and it handed the Bulls two consecutive sets. The Rams defence held out for the first set but couldn’t keep the Bulls out beyond that and Dawson-Jones grabbed his second try off the game.
With 15 minutes of the first half gone the Rams did produce an attack of their own and came close to a score but Harry Kidd was held up over the line.
Sadly, this was as good as it got for Dewsbury in this stage of the game. Dec Patton went through a huge gap in the Rams defensive line and then extended the Bradford lead to 18–0 by once again adding a successful conversion as he had done to the previous previous tries.
By this point, the Odsal men were in full control, but despite their dominance, they then began to make mistakes of their own. This gave Dewsbury three successive sets deep into the Bradford half, both Harry Kidd and Ross Peltier were held up over the line, but Peltier did break through for the home side’s first score with Matty Beharrell converting.
Dewsbury had managed to close the gap to 12 points but Bradford restored the 18 point gap as they sneaked in another try before half time in the shape of Elliot Kear.
The second half was a continuation of the first with the Bulls keeping the momentum by picking up regular scores and extending their lead to 40-6 as they regularly broke the Rams defence with ease aided by the Rams continuing to make errors and putting the pressure back on themselves. However the home team did finally find some rhythm, albeit a little too late, with Jimmy Beckett and Lewis Carr crossing to narrow the score line between the two teams but at this stage of the game it was very much too late in the day to form any comeback.
Coach Lee Greenwood had a few words after the match.
He said: “We never recovered from a horrendous start, we had the ball for one play in the first 10 minutes and conceded two avoidable tries, from then on there was a total lack of control, patience and discipline which led to the scoreline. Bradford have quality in their side and some of them took advantage of how bad our defence was. We have recruited a lot of players that are not seasoned at Championship level, they are going to have to learn quickly the standard of performance required at this level of the game.”
