< Back

Post Match with John

Monday 14th March 2011

I thought that yesterdays result, in our current circumstances was outstanding. To lose by just 8 points away in Cumbria, against a team that played in the division above last year says a hell of a lot about this group of players. I have never known an injury situation like ours at present, and on Saturday morning at 9am, we had only 18 fit players to choose from. At 10am on Saturday morning, we had only 17 players fit, with the loss of Gareth Hayes during the session with a severe knee injury that on first diagnosis could see him miss the full season.

We are doing it extremely tough at the minute, and we are trying our very best to fight our way off the ropes. To use a boxing analogy, we are doing this, without anybody in our corner to help. As a group, we are relying heavily on each other, and our team spirit continues to defy the odds, and we are fighting with everything we have got.

We travelled to Whitehaven yesterday with just 1 front rower, in John Cookson leading from the front throughout the game. It takes some courage to know that the rest of the team is relying on you, alone, to take them forward.

I thought Whitehaven were excellent in the first half and played the conditions and the pitch superbly. They continued to pin us into the corners and with such a lightweight pack, it was impossible at times to make any inroads into their defence, but we didn't give up. At half time, we found ourselves 18 points down, and in all honesty, we didn't deserve anything else. Not through lack of effort or desire, but unfortunately, we simply didn't have the players to be able to play how we wanted to. In fact, we only had 3 sets of six in the opposition half throughout the first half and I'd say we were defending our own line for 75% of the first half.

So taking that into consideration, our second half performance can surely only be described as fantastic. With our backs against the wall, we rallied with a never say die attitude. One thing that we have in abundance is a will to win and a fantastic work ethic, and instead of feeling sorry for ourselves in the second half, which could have easily turned into a thrashing, we rolled our sleeves up and took the game to the opponents.

There won't be many teams that go there in 2011 and come away with anything, so to say that we did it with 14 players missing is quite unbelievable.

Unfortunately, the situation doesn't seem to get any better and in fact we ended the game with more injuries. Chris Hough dislocated a knuckle, Dale Bloomfield damaged a shoulder, Dayne Donoghue pulled a bicep, Paul Crook continues to struggle with a leg injury and Matthew Strong has a knee injury.

However, I'm sure whichever lads wear the shirts this week against Swinton, they'll give it everything they've got as they did yesterday, and as we've seen many times in sport, it's not always the better placed team that wins the game. Swinton will bring a fully fit squad no doubt, and as we all know, they have had the pick of the available players this season, but I'm not sure that that buys you a team spirit.