Bradford Bulls injury update after key stars miss pre-season defeat

Kurt Haggerty insists Bradford Bulls have no major injury concerns despite a string of players missing their pre-season defeat to Leeds Rhinos.

The Bulls lost 46-16 to the Rhinos, but were without a number of notable names, including Andy Ackers, Rowan Milnes and Ryan Sutton.

Bradford started OK and were only down 16-12 at half-time, but were no match for the Rhinos, who had double the amount of interchanges to the Bulls.

Providing an update after the game, Haggerty said: “Rowan hurt his adductor and Zac Fulton (calf) dropped out the day before the game.

“Andy was literally another one who dropped out pretty much the day of the game. It was a back spasm. We lost Ryan Sutton (unspecified) this morning. They all should be back for the London game.

“We’ve just had one week where they’ve all fallen on the same week. It’s been a nervy week. But ultimately, I think we have dealt with it really well.”

There were no major concerns coming out of the game, with Mitch Souter passing a HIA and Dan Russell having a slight back complaint.

“I think the positive we need to take from it is that we were missing nine first-team players today,” Haggerty said.

“We’ve just celebrated in there that young Elliot Peposhi has played 80 minutes at this level, Mitch Souter has gone out and played 70 minutes. Then we’ve got young Jamie Gill who has come on and played 10-15 minutes against a very good Super League team.

“I think we were competitive 40, and then for 40 we weren’t competitive. I think it was individual errors, I don’t think it was a system or a collective thing. We’ll take a lot of what we did in the first half in particular.”