Dewsbury Rams v Bradford Bulls: Rams must learn to win close games says Lee Greenwood

Rams will go into tomorrow’s visit of Bradford Bulls (3pm) with their place in the Betfred Championship next year all-but assured.

Dewsbury are five points clear of second-bottom Barrow Raiders, who face a tough game at Sheffield Eagles tomorrow, with only three rounds remaining.

Rams have been involved in 10 matches this season decided by six points or fewer, but have won only one, with two draws and eight defeats.

Turning even half of those losses into victories would have made a big difference to their place in the table and Greenwood reflected: “If you said at the start of the season there’s going to be a load of games within six points, you’d like to win 50 per cent of them.

“The law of averages would suggest that, but we haven’t done it.

“You can’t put it all down to luck, there’s things we need to be better at.

“It is a mental thing, you need that group cohesion to get over the line in those games.”

Greenwood identified York City Knights as an example. He said: “They’ve been involved in a lot of tight games and won a lot of them.

“I think that comes from a team spirit that has been built there over a few years.”

Bulls’ play-off hopes will be over if they lose tomorrow, but Greenwood insisted Rams are motivated to build on recent improved form.

“We’ll approach it just the same,” he stated.

“We just want to keep turning up and keep competing.

“After the home games against Halifax and Featherstone we’ve shown we can compete with these types of teams.

“I’d probably put Bradford in that category of strength.

“We want more of the same, but we need to start well.

“We were so poor last week against Batley with ball in hand, we never got going at all until the last 10 minutes when we were 14-0 down.

“We were finishing strong, but we left it too long to get going.

“If we take that long and start slowly on Sunday it will be a game over-type job, which we are hoping we’ve seen the back of this year.”