Betfred Championship: Dewsbury Rams coach Lee Greenwood frustrated by late-in-the-day withdrawals

It is a tough assignment, away to a team who are fighting to hang on to second spot in the Betfred Championship, but Rams are safe from relegation with two rounds remaining and the pressure is off.

Rams made the trip on Friday and will return home tomorrow evening, but player unavailability has restricted Greenwood’s selection options.

He admitted: “It will be a struggle, to be honest.

“We have plenty of people unavailable or making themselves unavailable.

“It [the team] will probably be the last 17 available.

“It is incredibly frustrating, the fixtures have been in since last November or December and just in the last week or so we’ve had people saying they can’t get off work.

“There’s nothing we can do about it – I don’t know whether if we were going for the title or there was a massive bonus on the line they’d then be working, but it is much better than us going there having to get some points [to stay up].

“At one stage it could have come to that, we might have had to go there needing to win.

“We will go there as massive underdogs, with no expectations and [feeling] relaxed.”

Greenwood confirmed some fringe players who have not been featuring in the Championship or have had to go elsewhere on loan to get game time will have a chance to show what they can do.

“There’ll be a few guys getting an opportunity who probably deserve it anyway,” he said.

“I am not too downbeat with the squad we’ll have, it is more the frustration.

“You’d like to be able to do it on your own terms and select the team you want rather than just go with what you’ve got and it picks itself. But there’ll be some lads who have shown really good attitude and character by sticking around when they’ve not been playing and picking up game time when they can, whether it be loan, dual-reg or reserves.

“They’ve toughed it out, never caused any issues and carried on training. There’ll be a few of those guys on show and it is a good reward for them for sticking with it. They will certainly enjoy it.”