Hunslet v West Wales Raiders: Boss Gary Thornton warns about complacency

The Welsh club had one of the worst seasons in the sport’s history last year when they finished bottom of Betfred League One.

They lost all 26 league fixtures, conceded 2,106 points and scored only 176 – for a final points difference of 1,930.

More than 100 points were scored against them seven times, but Thornton does not expect West Wales to be such easy-beats this year.

“I’ve watched their two previous games, against Coventry and London Skolars and they have certainly improved,” Thornton reported.

“They’ve got a new Aussie coach and he has added some structure to them. There’s a couple of Aussie players in there as well, some play-makers and decent-sized forwards and we certainly can’t disrespect them. They have lost their two games this year, but the scorelines have been much closer.”

Hunslet began their season with an outstanding 20-18 win at Doncaster six days ago and Thornton insisted: “It’s a case of building on last week’s momentum. We need to make sure we put into practice all the good stuff we did and cut out some mistakes and penalties. It is a good opportunity to improve again.”

Though the Parksiders trailed 12-0 early on in last week’s game, Thornton has no major concerns about their starts to matches. He added: “We don’t want that to happen again, but I think there was a reason for it. We were off the pace of the game because we’d had a free week in round one. We had played Leeds and Bradford, but not having had that edge of playing for two competitive points it took us a bit of time to get going.

“I am not concerned. Last week I was a bit worried about how we might finish the game because we’d been conceding late points in pre-season, but we finished stronger than we started.”

Hunslet are in talks with Huddersfield Giants over bringing in young prop Jon-Luke Kirby on loan. Richard Moore (concussion) will miss tomorrow’s game, Adam Robinson is unavailable and there is an injury doubt over Michael Haley.