Tomorrow’s visit of Workington Town (3pm) is a game Hunslet need to win if they are going to finish in the top-five this year.
That’s the message from coach Gary Thornton, whose side are sitting seventh in the Betfred League One table, level on points with Town, but three places adrift on ‘for and against’.
There are no Super-8s this season and the league leaders will be promoted automatically, with the next four teams going into a play-offs series. Workington ended Bradford Bulls’ 100 per cent record last weekend, thanks to Jordan Tansey’s late drop goal, but Hunslet are also on a high after an impressive 24-16 win at Oldham which broke their three-game losing streak. “We have targeted our home games,” Thornton confirmed.
“We slipped up against Keighley and we don’t want a repeat of that. They will be buoyed by their win over Bradford, they will be confident and we know it will be a tough game, but I think we should be really confident after our performance last week.
“We had a terrific win at Oldham, who are one of the fancied teams, so I don’t think we should be underdogs for this one.
“I think we’ve got to take last week’s performance and carry on and build some momentum and confidence from it.”
Hunslet have won three of their five games so far, but Thornton admitted it has been difficult to get into a rhythm. “So far, we don’t seem to be getting any consistency,” he said.
“It has been a bit stop-start and a lot of that is to do with the weather and the pitches we’ve been playing on.
“It was a really heavy surface in the Cup against Bradford and then we played on a 4g last weekend.
“We’ve had a tough start, we’ve played some tough teams – Bradford twice, Keighley and Oldham.
“I’m reasonably happy with how we’ve started and hopefully now we can get into a run of week-in and week-out rugby league and get stuck into it that way.”
Thornton hopes to have Brad Foster (hamstring) available tomorrow. Mufaro Mvududu is set to return after damaged ribs kept him out of the game at Oldham, but Matt Nicholson (knee) is an injury doubt.
Article courtesy of Peter Smith, YEP.