Hunslet come off the back of a win against Salford, preparing for the visit of ‘High Flying’ Widnes this week at the South Leeds Stadium.
Head Coach Kyle Trout and his Coaching staff have had to contend with the loss of Jordan Baldwinson, Pauli Pauli and Sam Smeaton (all called back to Doncaster), but welcome Ben Johnson from Hull into the Squad.
“We’ve trained well this week.” said Trout “We watched the Salford game again and picked apart what we did well and what we can improve on. Our attack was not it’s usual standard, but we dug in and defended well. We isolated their threat players and stuck to our task, and our goal line defence was excellent. Dan Abram played well and we are starting to see his run game and leg speed which adds to our overall threat.”
“We are a bit light in the forwards this week, unfortunately some loans fell through, but we welcome Ben Johnson from Hull who plays Centre/Half Back and is a good kid with exciting potential.”
“It’s been difficult with injuries and having to take loans, we want consistency week on week, but good teams get through adversity, and we feel we can go after Widnes.”
Hunslet were unlucky not to win on Merseyside earlier in the year, but this week is likely to be a different game. Widnes are in form (Reaching the 1895 Cup Final) and have welcomed Danny Richardson from York into the halves.
“They have a good kicking game and a couple of generals in Gilmore and Richardson. We need to be on it with the ball and cut out the mistakes of last week. It’s about positives and negatives, the positives are the lads are doing what we ask for, but the negatives are they sometimes don’t execute correctly. Know where and when to slip a pass out and read the game. Credit to the lads though in their first season under me they’ve played some entertaining Rugby and are a real threat.”
Two players worth looking at are Liam Carr and Mo Agoro.
“Liam’s been exceeding expectation this Season. Along with Mackenzie Turner we challenged Liam to see what he wanted from his career and worked on it and it’s pleasing to see it coming to fruition. With Mo we see his intent, he is a pro and his competitiveness and physicality are just what we wanted.”
Darcy Simpson and Jimmy Watson come into contention this week, but Ant Walker is still suffering a knee injury. Kevin Larroyer is likely to be back in action in the next fortnight.
19-man squad
