Bulls should `never play as bad again'

From the archive, first published Tuesday 21st Feb 2006.

Shontayne Hape today told Bulls fans: "We owe you a big performance as much as ourselves."

The Kiwi centre was as gutted as the rest of his team-mates with the 18-18 draw against Harlequins.

Mistakes were rife and the misfiring champions were lucky to come away from Saturday's clash with a point.

They have an immediate opportunity to right the wrongs as Salford City Reds arrive at Odsal on Friday night and Hape admits the side are

desperate to respond.

"Everyone was flat against Quins - there wasn't much talk, nothing seemed to click and there was way too many errors," he said.

"For me, in the last two weeks since the World Club Challenge it's all been a bit flat and I remember Robbie (Paul) used to say when you have success, it sometimes gets like that.

"But we can only get better and we should never play as bad as we did against Quins again.

"It was really disappointing as it was our first home game and so we not only let ourselves down but the fans too. We owe it to them now to get it right."

The Bulls were concentrating on their ruck play in training yesterday to get up to speed with referees' new interpretation of the laws.

Quins managed to flout these rules better than Bradford at the weekend and that massively slowed down the hosts.

"The pleasing thing is we played poorly and still managed to get a point," said Hape, who has touched down in both fixtures against Quins and the narrow win at Wakefield.

"Salford will probably be the best team we've played yet. Mentally that might be better for us."

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