James Coyle slammed his team’s first half attitude after watching them demolished at top four hopefuls Bradford.

The Whitehaven boss, who last week revealed he is to leave the club at the end of the season, watched the former Super League side run in nine tries and 52 unanswered points prior to the break at Odsal, before regaining some pride through a more encouraging second half display.

Haven were 64 points behind just six minutes into the second period but, aided by the Bulls having ex-Hull KR centre Kris Welham sin-binned for 10 minutes, they responded with three tries of their own to finish with some respectability if no addition to their league points.

“It was a really bad start and we just weren’t good enough,” conceded an almost disbelieving Coyle.

“We had one set and then didn’t touch the ball again for 11 minutes and when you are in that sort of position you have to be mentally strong to pull out the other side but we weren’t.

“We played the badge rather than the team that was in the shirt and mentally we weren’t right. Our work ethic wasn’t good enough in the first half but did improve in the second.

“I said to them at half time that what we were doing wrong was nothing to do with our system or shape – it was our attitude.

“It was nothing to do with what we do in training.

“I told them that you have to say on the field for 80 minutes whether you are 50 points up or 50 points down, so there was no-where to hide and they had to go out and do something about it.

Coyle revealed that since the revelation that he was to stand down, the week went steadily downhill in the run-up to the game, albeit for totally unconnected reasons.

“We were without about eight players who would normally start but that’s no excuse for the attitude.”