SIMON SMITH: We'll improve in the New Year

We allowed them to get away to a good start and from there on in we were playing catch-up rugby - which is always difficult against sides a strong as Bradford.

Our injury list may have become longer, losing Drew Govier to a broken hand which will keep him out for around six weeks, but that isn’t a good enough excuse for the first 20 minutes.

We need to front up and improve and in a way it’s good that the players who are making the step up to first team rugby are experiencing just how difficult it is to play at this level and what is needed in terms of fitness and ability levels to compete in North One East.

It’s frustrating to see missed tackles and a poor start to the game when you spend so long preparing for games in training and beforehand.

Having said that, we managed to compete after that, it was just frustrating that we couldn’t quite get a bonus point as we had enough chances to score a fourth try.

Our hope is now to get a few senior players back fighting fit off the physio’s table in the new year and hopefully we can compete and win games.

Getting the likes of Phil Watson, Drew and Euan Govier, Chris Purdy, Nino Cutino, Ben Martin and Komiti Tuilagi back available would be a big boost for us.

We return to action against Kendal on Saturday January 4 and it’s games like that that we need to looking at winning and hopefully we can do just that.

In the meantime we have the Old Boys game at Silver Royd on Saturday when we’ll be raising money in memory of Manning Smith.

It just shows the great brotherhood we have at Scarborough and it is that spirit that I firmly believe will see us end our poor run of form and help us return to winning ways.

There’s a great spirit and camaraderie we have among the group is special and I’m very confident we’ll improve in the new year.

In the meantime, I’d like to wish all readers a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year and hope to see you at Silver Royd on January 4.