Featherstone Rovers v Dewsbury Rams: Formbook favours Fev but Ryan Carr won’t be taking Rams lightly

Five points separate the teams in the Betfred Championship table and Featherstone are bidding for a third successive win while Dewsbury have suffered a hat-trick of defeats. The formbook suggests a home victory, but Rovers coach Ryan Carr is approaching the game with caution.

He warned: “There’s no easy games. I’ve watched a bit of their game against Sheffield last week and there was a lot of [yellow] cards, it was hard to get a read when there’s a lot going on like that, but they’ve brought in a few new players and strengthened their squad.

“They were unlucky not to win last weekend and they took Toronto right to the wire so we have got our hands full.”

But Rovers broke their sequence of following a win with a loss at Swinton last week and Carr reckons a third successive victory would be “huge for us”. He said: “We are trying to get some consistency in our team. Not through anything other than necessity we’ve been rolling out different teams each week. In the first seven games I’ve used 27/28 players and that’s not me dropping people.

“Once we’re able to start fielding the same team we will get more consistent and confident together and we’ll see the true potential of what we can do together.”

Rams have managed just one win and a draw this year, but let a late winning lead slip in three of their four defeats and boss Lee Greenwood insisted: “I am not too concerned, as frustrating as it is.

“We have made ourselves hard to beat, especially at home and these teams are a lot further down the track than we are and they are just pipping us. There are some positives to take but we need to start winning as well.”

Of Rovers, Greenwood said: “They are all tough games, but we will look at Featherstone and see what we can do to trouble them.

“Our away performances haven’t been great, we didn’t play well up at Barrow and managed to nick a point and we didn’t play well against Halifax [two weeks ago].

“We need to improve on our away form in general.”