French crushed by Bulls

Bradford humiliated Toulouse with a 98-6 romp at Odsal to seriously dent the French side's Super League ambitions.

Toulouse have applied for a top flight franchise next season but this 17-try defeat will have done nothing for their hopes of impressing the authorities.

The Bulls' try-haul is a record for the club, full-back Dave Halley scoring four of them and stand-off Iestyn Harris kicking 15 conversions from 17 attempts.

That was also a record - overhauling the mark set by Joe Phillips in 1952 and equalled by Henry Paul eight years ago.

Bradford's score broke their previous highest - a 96-16 Super League win over Salford in 2000.

Loose forward Glenn Morrison and winger Semi Tadulala both grabbed hat-tricks and the Bulls also had three other tries disallowed as they piled on the agony for Toulouse, whose 2007-08 season was brought to an end with a third defeat in eight days.

The game attracted a crowd of just 3,569, which included Rugby Football League chief executive Nigel Wood.

Pale shadow

With eight first-choice players sidelined through injury, Toulouse were a pale shadow of the side that reached the semi-finals just three years ago.

Bradford, even without four regulars, including captain and record points scorer Paul Deacon, had too much power and pace for the French part-timers and could have won by an even bigger margin.

When the Bulls led 36-0 after just 18 minutes, there was a real possiblity of them breaking the tournament record score of 120 set by Rochdale against amateurs Illingworth three years ago.

But Toulouse briefly halted the Bulls charge and left winger Frederic Vaccari pulled a try back on 22 minutes, bumping off prop Chris Feather on the way to the line, and full-back Hosni Kriouachi added the conversion.

The gulf in class was all too evident from the moment Great Britain forward Sam Burgess plunged over for the opening try in the second minute.

Scrum-half Ben Jeffries, Tadulala and substitute forward Simon Finnigan all touched down twice before half-time, with Morrison, James Evans and Halley adding others.

Tadulala completed his second hat-trick of the season 10 minutes into the second half and Morrison did likewise after taking an offload from Finnigan and then re-gathering a kick by Jeffries.

Morrison had a fourth try disallowed but Halley crossed for three scores in a seven-minute spell before adding his fourth later on, while giant winger Tame Tupou also got on the scoresheet on his return from a month-long injury lay-off.