NEXT week sees the North One East season reach its halfway point and Bradford and Bingley go into that fixture against Bridlington nicely placed, fourth in the league table, after recording an impressive 29-12 comeback win at Malton and Norton.

On a tricky surface, the Bees put away their silky skills and battered away up the middle of the field for most of the first hour.

This tactic ground down the home defence and the visitors were able to run in four tries between the 47th and 68th minutes to claim the bonus point victory.

The pick of those scores was the final one, when flanker Will Broadbent somehow gathered a pass which had been wildly flung towards him at ankle height and zipped home from 25 metres out, with the Malton and Norton defence nowhere to be seen.

Tom Cummins put in a man of the match shift at number eight, bashing his way through the mud and a wall of defenders time and time again.

The other two Toms in the Bees back row, Booth and Bacon, also did their fair share of heavy lifting and Bacon's turn of speed across the slightly less damp areas of the field saw him galloping home for the visitors' first try in the 17th minute.

The home side had opened the scoring in the eighth minute through Nick Daley, with a deserved second score coming in the 28th minute. This meant the home side turned round 12-5 up, after Paul Angus had converted Daley's try.

The home side seemed to be basing their defence on standing up the Bees attacker to stop the ball going to ground and therefore preventing a quicker release of the ball from the ruck.

The tactic backfired as the referee awarded the home side a scrum when the maul became static, which allowed the Bees pack to shunt the home side off the ball or to win a penalty.

Inevitably, Bradford and Bingley chose to scrummage again and as the second half wore on, the gaps started to appear in the home defence.

This allowed the Bees to try new tactics and Stefan Roguski was soon over the line from short yardage, leaving Lance Taylor a relatively simple conversion.

With the ball now being shifted out wide, it was perhaps inevitable that Jack Malthouse would find himself on the end of a move to claim his tenth try in as many appearances.

This was followed almost immediately by a score from Tom Johnson, who was starting to create more space as the game wore on and the home side tired.

It was a Taylor and Johnson break up the right wing which teed up Broadbent's superb final score in the 68th minute.

As the weather closed in and the gloom descended further, it seemed that the referee had seen enough and he ended the game in the 75th minute.