In-form derby foes gear up for potential crowd pleaser

Batley drew with Bradford five days earlier in the league and Dewsbury’s coach Glenn Morrison is full of respect for their near neighbours.

“Against Bradford they dug deep for 80 minutes and they won last week’s game against Whitehaven by a point in the Cup, which was another 80-minute performance,” he said.

“We know they’re not just going to turn up for half a game and fall away. They will fight to the end all year and it has another Grand Final feel about it.

“We are looking forward to it, we know it is going to be tough and we have got to back up from last week.

“We got a good result last week and we need to keep kicking on.”

Bulldogs’ boss John Kear is also expecting a thriller. He said: “Dewsbury were really good against Bradford, they played really well and they’ll be full of confidence.

“We have been going well and both teams are at the right end of the table, so it should be a good crowd and a cracking game.”

Defence is the concern for Kear. He added: “We’ve conceded 60 points in our last two games.

“We can’t keep outscoring teams, at some stage we have got to restrict them. It is hard to look at full-on contact defence when you’ve got such a busy period coming up, but we just have to get on with it.”

Featherstone Rovers play host to Sheffield Eagles tonight (7.30pm) bidding for a fifth straight league win.

“It’s a massive game,” said coach Jon Sharp, whose team won away to league leaders London Broncos in the Challenge Cup last Saturday and return there on Monday.

“It is big for both teams and if we have got aspirations this year we have to be beating teams like Sheffield.

“We are going to have to play better than we did against London. We started poorly, we were 14-0 down and I don’t think it will be as easy to get back into the game against Sheffield.”

Leeds Rhinos duo Mitch Achurch and Jordan Baldwinson could feature for Rovers on dual-registration.