BRADFORD & Bingley's seventh win in succession - a 24-10 success at home to Bridlington - put them third in North One East.

The four-try bonus point win left them in ideal shape ahead of an interesting tussle at home to local rivals Cleckheaton this Saturday before the league programme closes down for Christmas.

The Bees are the only side in the top five who have played seven of their opening fixtures at home and are also the only team in that group to have lost twice on their own patch.

But those early losses to Scarborough and Huddersfield YMCA, the two sides ahead of them at the top, seem to belong to a different age.

The Bees also have a chance to redeem themselves at YMCA in their opening fixture of the new year.

The game against Brid won't be one that lives long in the memory as two squads of largely indistinguishable men thrashed about in the mud while the Wagon Lane crowd peered through the gloom to try and work out what was going on.

The Bees never really got going and the visitors were far more of a threat than had been envisaged.

The hosts were on the scoreboard after three minutes as Jack Malthouse skidded in at the corner, with a desperate defender hanging on to his legs as he slid over for the score.

The Bridlington defender snapped the corner flag as he slid out of play, which gave rise to one of the more entertaining moments of the afternoon as Ryan Wederell was handed a dessert spoon to try and dig the remains of the flag post out of the ground, which he did successfully.

The visitors replied with a well-taken score of their own ten minutes later as Ralph Johnson scurried over out on the left and Harvey Morrison added the extras.

Seven minutes later Bees regained the lead as Ali Macdonald thundered up the middle, swatting defenders out of his way to the line.

Macdonald went over the whitewash again and, with Lance Taylor converting the second of his brace and Morrison chipping in a penalty in between, it was 17-10 to the home side at the interval.

The Bees came out of the blocks for the second half looking far livelier, even though they had Gene Te Amo in the sin bin.

Within four minutes they had added the bonus point score as Taylor scooted over and then added the conversion.

With the elements at the backs of the home side, the Wagon Lane faithful possibly expected the scoreboard to start moving but it was not to be.

There followed nearly a full half of handling errors and falls on both sides and in the final analysis, with no points awarded for style, the home side had done enough to add five points to their standing in the table.

They had also navigated around a possible banana skin to keep the march up the division going.