KEIGHLEY Cougars’ interim head coach Jy-mel Coleman has admitted the players and staff let the fans, the club and themselves down in Sunday’s humiliating 74-12 defeat to Bradford Bulls at Odsal.

Keighley have now lost six of their last seven Betfred Championship games to plunge into relegation trouble, but the most recent three defeats had all been by less than four points, and they had won their previous fixture against a quietly impressive Whitehaven side.

Few saw a result on the scale of Sunday’s coming, with Coleman reflecting: “It’s never good to lose but to do it in that manner, with the performance we dished up, was not nice at all.

“I can’t put my finger on exactly what went wrong but the performance was very unlike us since I’ve taken over.

“It all went wrong and we didn’t perform.

“At the break, we’d given ourselves half a chance (at 22-6 down) by scoring late on in the first half.

“The message at half-time was that Bulls had overturned a similar deficit at the Summer Bash against us, so it could be done.

“I was confident the boys would deliver in the second half, but it didn’t happen, and I think it was just a freak performance.”

Coleman was keen to be up front, while still sending a positive message, adding: “As staff and players, we let the fans, the club and ourselves down, so there’s no blame on anyone in particular.

“It wasn’t good enough and it’s been addressed with a hard, honest chat at training.

“But we can put it down as a blip, as since I’ve taken over, we’ve been better defensively, not conceding as many points, giving away an amount where we can still easily win the game.

“Freak games like against Bulls happen, there were two blowouts bigger than ours in the NRL over the weekend for example.

“The boys never gave up on Sunday, they kept going, but were just defeated by a team who were a lot better than them on the day.”