Lingard left ‘massively disappointed’ after Swinton's stunning comeback win

Lingard’s men, following on from their first win in London since 1988 the weekend before, had established a ten-point advantage at the start of the second half but four tries in the final 20 minutes saw the newly-promoted Lions claim their first points of the season.

“I am massively disappointed and that is just an understatement,” said Lingard. “All the good work we did last week down in London, we basically threw that away with the performance we put in.

“It was flat, it lacked energy, it lacked enthusiasm, it lacked passion in defence - it lacked basically everything we showed at London.

“No disrespect to Swinton at all, because they were thoroughly deserving of the win, but if we’re wanting to match our aspirations of getting to the top six again then we need to be beating Swinton at home.

“But I thought Swinton were outstanding in everything they did. They beat us to a man. We were really frustrated and disappointed with the first half performance and we knew that Swinton were going to challenge us and weren’t just going to roll over.

“We wanted to start the second half well and I thought that we did. I thought we had pretty much all of the ball in those first ten minutes and we got that try through Kieran Buchanan just on the back of building some pressure and playing in the right area of the field.

“Up by ten points in that moment in time you’re looking then to put your foot down. We were in a really good position and in control of the ball. We should have been pretty ruthless and put our foot on the throat and put them under more pressure but we didn’t do that.”

Asked if he could take any positives out of the game, Lingard responded:

“I thought there were a couple of good performances from Kieran Buchanan and Martyn Reilly. They didn’t deserve to be anywhere near the losing side. They wore their heart on their sleeve and they played with that passion and enthusiasm and energy.

“I was disappointed for them but other than that there are very few positives at all I can take out of it.”

The game was the Bulldogs’ first home fixture of the 2023 Championship season and Lingard, along with chairman Kevin Nicholas, had called for the people of Batley to take advantage of the reduced ticket price scheme, in the hope of getting more fans through the turnstiles.

Asked if the result and performance would entice any future fan back to the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium, Lingard bluntly said:

“Based on that performance, no. I felt we were terrible. Any neutrals or people on the fence deciding whether to come back, that performance isn’t going to do us any good whatsoever.

“We wanted to put in a good performance at home to try and attract these floating fans. Based on that performance I certainly wouldn’t come back based on that.

“You’re wanting your team to play with that passion and play with that enthusiasm that we are renowned for doing and we didn’t show that.

“It was a very flat performance all round, which is extremely disappointing. It was our first home game of the season and we wanted to put a marker down. That is not the marker we wanted to put down.

“Our home form over the last couple of years is absolutely abysmal. I think we have lost more than 50 per cent of our home games which isn’t good enough.

“Everybody thinks Batley is a difficult place to come to play at but obviously it isn’t because we are losing more games than we are winning at home. Whatever the reason that is down to, we need to find out very, very quickly.”