Archive
Sat, 19 April 2008
Bradford Bulls V Toulouse Olympique XIII
Bradford Bulls: Dave Halley, Semi Tadulala, Paul Sykes, James Evans, Tame Tupou, Iestyn Harris, Ben Jeffries, Sam Burgess, Wayne Godwin, Matt James, Glenn Morrison, David Solomona, Jamie Langley
Subs: Michael Platt, Chris Feather, Terry Newton, Simon Finnigan
Tries: Dave Halley(4), Semi Tadulala(3), James Evans, Tame Tupou, Ben Jeffries(2), Sam Burgess, Glenn Morrison(3), Simon Finnigan(2)
Goals: Iestyn Harris(15)
Toulouse Olympique XIII: Adel Fellous, Nicolas Faure, David Delpoux, Planas, Jerome Gout, Constant Villegas, Bruno Ormerno, Oliver Pranil, Hosri Kriouache, Fredice Vaccari, Laurent Carrasco, Joris Canton, Sylvain Houles.
Subs: Cedric Prizzon, Batein Dentilhac, Julien Roumagnac, Remy Bueno
Tries: Vaccari
Goals: Kriouache (1 from 1)
REPORT
The Bradford Bulls ran riot with a club record 17-try, 98-6 romp in their fourth-round Carnegie Challenge Cup tie against Toulouse Olympique XIII at the Grattan Stadium, Odsal.
Full-back Dave Halley scored four tries and stand-off Iestyn Harris kicked 15 conversions from 17 attempts to break the club’s goalkicking record originally set by Joe Phillips in 1952 and equalled by Henry Paul eight years ago.
Bradford’s score broke their previous highest set in their 96-16 engage Super League win over Salford in 2000 and also equalled their highest margin of victory; the 92-0 defeat of Workington Town in the same round of the Challenge Cup in February 1999
Loose forward Glenn Morrison and winger Semi Tadulala both grabbed hat-tricks and the Bulls also had three other tries disallowed as they piled on the agony for Toulouse, whose 2007-08 season was brought to a sudden and calimitous end with a third defeat in eight days.
The outcome was a disappointment for the 3,569 crowd, which included Rugby Football League chief executive Nigel Wood, and a huge embarrassment for the French.
With eight first-choice players sidelined through injury, Toulouse were a pale shadow of the side that reached the semi-finals just three years ago.
Bradford, even without four regulars, including captain and record points scorer Paul Deacon, had too much power and pace for the French part-timers and could have won by an even bigger margin.
When the Bulls led 36-0 after just 18 minutes, there was a real possiblity of them breaking the tournament record score of 120 set by Rochdale against amateurs Illingworth three years ago.
But Toulouse briefly halted the Bulls charge and left winger Frederic Vaccari pulled a try back on 22 minutes, bumping off prop Chris Feather on the way to the line, and full-back Hosni Kriouachi added the conversion.
The gulf in class was all to evident from the moment Great Britain forward Sam Burgess plunged over for the opening try in the second minute.
Scrum-half Ben Jeffries, Tadulala and substitute forward Simon Finnigan all touched down twice before half-time, with Morrison, James Evans and Halley adding others.
Tadulala completed his second hat-trick of the season 10 minutes into the second half and Morrison did likewise after taking an offload from Finnigan and then re-gathering a kick by Jeffries.
Morrison had a fourth try disallowed but Halley achieved that feat after going over for three in a seven-minute spell and Tame Tupou also got on the scoresheet on his first appearance for a month.
POST-MATCH COMMENTS
Bradford coach Steve McNamara was full of sympathy for Toulouse after the injury-hit Frenchmen were on the receiving end of a club record score.
"You never like to see that sort of scoreline but we just had to get the job done and we did," said McNamara.
"Obviously they are doing it tough at the back end of their season but they tried their hardest."
"We made some errors if you want to be critical but I thought our players conducted themselves well throughout the game."
"The most important thing is getting through to the next round."
The embarrassing scale of defeat will do little to help Toulouse in their bid to land a Super League licence for 2009 but coach Thierry Dumaine pointed to a big injury list and an end-of-season fixture jam.
"We are disappointed with the score but some of our best players are injured and we had a young side out," said Dumaine.
"We knew it was a big step up and I just told my players to do their best. We are not conditioned to play 80 minutes at this level."
"If we were to come into Super League, 75% of the team would change and we would have a professional structure."