London Broncos head coach Andrew Henderson lamented Saturday's 46-22 Championship loss at Halifax RLFC.

After a run which had seen London win their last four to move back into play-off contention, it proved a bitter pill to swallow as they were leapfrogged by the Yorkshire side, slipping to sixth in the process.

A frustrated Henderson told the club website: “Disappointing is an understatement. We were far from good enough today and I have to give credit to Halifax, after minute one it was one-way traffic. We had a great start, a dream start with an early score, then it was all Halifax.”

London took the lead within two minutes of kick off as Rhys Williams went over following a well-worked move which involved William Barthau and Tom Gilmore. Wes Naiqama was successful with the subsequent conversion.

However, Halifax pulled level almost immediately via Dan Manning and then the floodgates opened, with London trailing 30-6 by half time as Ben Kaye, Ben Johnston, Steve Tyrer and James Saltonstall all went over.

“I am disappointed, as a group and a team we’ve turned ourselves around,” said Henderson. “We have had a pretty ordinary start to the year and these last five or six games we have come together and build a bit of momentum and ascendancy and given ourselves a realistic chance of finishing top four.

“We were out-enthused, they ran harder and executed better, they kicked better, in all facets of the game they were better than us,” he added.

Despite an improved second-half performance, London had left themselves with too difficult a task and were unable to recover the deficit.

Williams again (47), Oscar Thomas (60) and Naiqama (64) all scored tries in the second half and Naiqama added three further conversions, but Halifax managed three second-half tries themselves and prevented Broncos from ever finding a way back into the game.

The Broncos host eighth-placed Whitehaven RLFC at the Hive on Sunday in their penultimate home league fixture of the season.