‘Embarrassing’ defeat to Sheffield Eagles leaves Batley Bulldogs boss Diskin fuming

Fans were offered free admission to the Jo Cox memorial game and Bulldogs’ defence was also in generous mood, conceding nine tries.

“In my tenure here that’s the most embarrassing performance we’ve had,” Diskin fumed. “Some of the individuals in there need to take a long, hard look at themselves.

“They are not playing for each other and they’re not playing for the shirt that’s on their back. That’s the disappointing bit.”

Diskin added: “If you were playing against Toronto or Leeds or St Helens you could understand that scoreline, but that was Sheffield.

“No disrespect to them, they are going exceptionally well this year, but they are not that good a team for us to concede 54 points.

“It was terrible, an embarrassing result and an embarrassing performance from one to 17. The 54 scoreline isn’t anything technical or structural, it’s what’s between the ears of the players.

“At the moment they are not mentally tough enough to carry out a plan or to work hard enough for each other or to stay in games long enough to get a result.

“It is quite obvious as a group they are mentally weak and they need to toughen up.

“I thought a couple of tries we scored were really well executed and looked pretty sharp, but as a percentage of the game about two per cent of it was positive, the rest was terrible, embarrassing to watch.”

Bulldogs visit Widnes Vikings on Sunday and Diskin pledged to be ruthless with his team selection.

He said: “We’ve been very protective about the dual-registration agreement, making sure we protect the dynamic in our squad and don’t upset that, but I am going to make wholesale changes because the dynamic of what we’ve got at the moment obviously isn’t working.

“I will ring Huddersfield and see who’s available.”