Bulls must be at their best
Bradford’s Steve Menzies has warned his Bulls team-mates that they must be at their very best on Saturday when they face Warrington Wolves in a televised Carnegie Challenge Cup quarter-final against at Grattan Stadium.
The 36-year-old Australian forward is acutely aware of the threat the holders pose to Bradford’s own Carnegie Challenge Cup ambitions and believes that his side must cut out the basic errors if they are to progress to next Wednesday’s semi-final draw.
Menzies said: “I think we need to be at our very best. I think they’re a side that can hurt you anywhere on the field.
“They’ve got a lot of strike players so I don’t think we can afford to give them too much easy field position.
“They can hurt you when they’re camped in your area too much, so we’ve got to cut errors out and try and kick the ball long and keep them under pressure that way.”
The Australian spent his entire career with Manly Sea Eagles before joining the Bulls last season and is not underestimating the importance and history of the Carnegie Challenge Cup
“Obviously you’re aware of the Challenge Cup in Australia and it’s one of the main things in English Rugby League that you hear,” said Menzies, a veteran of 349 NRL games.
“Steve McNamara had a talk to us at the start of the Cup about what it means and it would be nice to go a little bit deeper in it and experience it, because that’s why you play the game, to play the big ones and play in finals.
“We didn’t really get much of a taste of it last year going out in the first round. But the more games you play and the closer you get to Wembley, the build up is more around and a little bit more exciting and you can really start to feel how big it is and what it means to the game over here.”
Menzies, along with Glenn Hall and Matt Orford, will go up against former Manly team-mates Chris Hicks and Michael Monaghan and he believes that these match-ups will add an extra dimension to the game at Odsal.
“There’s a few Manly boys on our side and a couple on theirs and it’s always fun playing against those guys,” he said.
“I’m sure there’ll be a little bit of niggle and talk between the tackles and hopefully some bragging rights for the Bradford boys after the game.”
The Bulls were missing Australian duo Brett Kearney and Matt Orford from Sunday’s 26-12 defeat to Leeds Rhinos, but Menzies is confident that should they miss out again this week, they have a strong enough squad to cope with a Warrington side who lie second in Engage Super League.
“Over the past couple of months we’ve been playing really well,” Menzies added.
“We’re still missing a couple of key players but I though we showed in the second half of the Wakefield game that we can play without Ox and a couple of the boys there.
“They might not be here again this week but I think the boys are confident enough and if we play our best we can compete against them.”