Featherstone Rovers: Team reaping benefits of warm weather training camp

Rovers will aim to make it two wins from two in the Betfred Championship at home to Toulouse Olympique tomorrow (3pm).

They began by beating Halifax 20-4 six days ago – and Duffy revealed giving players the slip in training is paying off.

“I think that time away in Spain in the better weather has helped us a great deal,” Duffy said.

“Since we’ve come back we’ve trained with wet, soapy balls every session to get us ready for the weather.

“It was a really tough game and tough conditions as well last Sunday. Although it wasn’t raining it was really heavy leg kind of rugby.

“That’s what games are going to be like especially at the start of the season and we’ve got to handle it in the right manner.

“It’s a long season and we’ve got our first win under our belt going into this weekend, so that’s great, but we won’t get too far ahead of ourselves.

“I was really happy with last week, but obviously we can get better.”

The fixture planners handed Rovers a tough opening to the league season.

Halifax were a top-four side last year and Featherstone are now gearing up for back-to-back contests against full-time opposition, with tomorrow’s game being followed a week later by a trip to London Broncos.

“We’ve got full-time teams to play now – two on the bounce – so there are things in our game we’ll need to be really good at,” Duffy warned.

“We have got to have a good game plan against these full-time teams as well.

“Obviously they have a lot of time to rest up and do their work, so we’ve got to be really smart over the next two weeks and hopefully get some more good results.”