Hunslet Hawks: Bramald bemoans Hawks' bad start

Hunslet were beaten 44-26, after trailing 20-0 at the end of the first quarter.

“We barely touched the ball early on,” Bramald said. “In the first 15 minutes we only had three sets and we didn’t complete any of those.

“I knew they would come out at 100 miles and hour and I felt if we could live with them early on we would be in the game.

“But we couldn’t hold them out and we were always chasing the game after that.

“The way we played after that opening 15-20 minutes, it was an even contest, but we left ourselves too much to do.”

Bramald said two incidents – when Simon Brown’s kick rebounded off the crossbar away from Danny Williams and Stewart Sanderson was ruled to have put a foot in touch before passing to Kyran Johnson – were crucial.

The coach added: “We had a great reaction when we got an even share of the ball.

“There were plenty of positives out of it, but we never quite got close enough to mount a proper challenge.”

Bramald praised the contributions from Simon Brown, Richie Barnett and Michael Haley, who had a big game in the front-row after substitute Lewis Reed hobbled off with a recurrence of a dead leg.