McNamara: Bulls ready for tough Easter period

Bradford’s big derby clash with Leeds on Thursday is the first of three tricky games in little over a week for Steve McNamara’s side.

After travelling to Headingley for the televised clash, the Bulls play Crusaders on Easter Monday before travelling to France to face Catalans a week on Saturday.

He said: “It is very tough, there is no two ways about it but you know it’s coming and you put your plans in place, your recovery times and you hope you have a fully fit squad to start with and we are not too far off that at the moment, so hopefully that will stay the same for the next three weeks.

“We have three games coming up in nine days and if you can go and pick six points up in that time then that’s a massive period for you.  Four is good but you don’t really want anything less than four and with that in mind we are certainly intent on starting this programme off in good fashion and we’ll worry about the rest after that.

“We have two out of those three with reasonable travelling; we are down the road at Headingley, return home on Monday and then we have to go to France to play Catalans and that’s the one most people would say you don’t want to be doing at the end of the Easter period but I think the opposite and we like to go away as a group and it will be good to get some sun on our backs after the Easter schedule. I think it’s the best possible preparation we could have.”

Bradford find themselves in eighth place in the Super League table having ended a two game losing streak with a hard-fought 19-12 victory over Harlequins last weekend.