Rammo’s Blog

Mick Ramsden

The Hull friendly probably highlighted more areas to work on than any of the three games so far, both in attack and defence. We went relatively strong for this game with Paul King, Tommy Haughey and Chris Thorman playing their first games this year. We were very dis-jointed in defence and were broken down too many times and this was mainly down to players doing their own thing rather than working as a unit. That said, there were also a number of dead set one-on-one misses which really is unacceptable especially against a team of youngsters. It will take a bit of time to fix this area but we started work on it this week in training and we know the players will get there if they work hard and buy into the systems.

With the ball we just didn’t keep possession long enough to build any pressure and this was down to pushing the pass when we didn’t need to. We will score tries this year, we have strike players who will get over the line but the players have to understand that it’s a process to get there and we have to respect possession of the ball and complete our sets.

Paul King received the sponsors man of the match award having shown his undoubted class, particularly carrying the ball. He has loads of skill for a big man and the fact that he can deliver an effective pass on the charge opened up the Hull defence a couple of tiimes. It’s a shame he’s taken a knock to the ribs and will now be out for a few weeks because he will be good for us this year. I can see that he’s really committed to the club, and this shows as he’s been out on the training field this week offering a word in the ear to some of the players even though he can’t take part at the moment, and that’s important to us as a coaching team.

We are continuing to see consistently good performances from a number of players, the pick of those being Jack Aldous, Adam Sullivan and James Haynes and all three of these are also working hard in training which doesn’t go unnoticed by us.

So we are now looking at the Castleford game this week who are bringing a strong pack, with Nathan Massey and John Davies featuring, of whom we know a lot about. It will be a good test for us and we have to see improvements with this being our last friendly before the northern rail cup starts in two weeks. Key to this will be the link between Chris Thorman and Jordan Tansey, who are still working on building an understanding between them. This will obviously take a bit of time but potentially it could be one of the best half back partnerships in the league. Tansey showed some nice touches last week, he’s got an abundance of pace and skill and he can open up a defence so long as he has runners around him doing their jobs with good effect.

Finally, thanks to all our corporate sponsors who we had a nice meal with last night in Bar 13. Your support is vital to us, and we appreciate what you do.

Look forward to seeing you all this Sunday.
Cheers
Rammo