Hunslet v West Wales: Respectful Hunslet to go about business in professional manner

The visitors have lost all their eight league games this year, conceding 700 points and scoring only 44.

They suffered a world-record 144-0 drubbing at York City Knights last month, were beaten 124-0 away to Bradford Bulls the following week and their best defensive effort was a 54-6 loss to North Wales. But Thornton warned: “We can’t get carried away and be thinking about running up a big score.”

He added: “It is more about performing in a professional manner and doing the things we do well. We have got to be respectful not only of the opposition, but also the way we play and our game plan.

“Everyone expects us to beat them comfortably, but there has been an improvement, they’ve had a change in coaching staff and brought some players in. We need to make sure we keep the standards we’ve shown in recent games and improve in certain areas.”

One of those areas is the start of matches. Thornton admitted: “We’ve found ourselves behind in games too often. That’s something we’ve been speaking about and working on and we need to try to get off to a decent start.”

Meanwhile, Shaun Roberts, Dean Roberts and Jordan Gill have left Hunslet by “mutual consent”.

Director of rugby Darren Williams said: “Shaun and Dean asked to leave citing lack of opportunities and Jordan has a long-standing knee injury.”