New half-back pairing steers injury-hit Featherstone Rovers in right direction

The Post Office Road-based outfit had tumbled out of the Betfred Championship’s all-important top-four after four successive league defeats.

But Rovers are now on a two-game winning run and sit third in the table, level on points with second-placed Toulouse Olympique.

Featherstone ran in nine tries in a 52-4 thrashing of Barrow Raiders two days ago, after scoring seven in the previous week’s 42-18 success at Dewsbury Rams.

And Duffy was delighted with his injury-hit side.

“We made errors in our first two sets, but once we got past those couple of errors I thought we were really good in the first half,” he reflected.

“There was only one lapse in concentration, which was poor from our left edge, but I was happy overall – and we are injury-free.

“We were down to our last 17 and Gaz [Hock] and a couple of others were carrying a few niggles so we had to look after their minutes during the game.

“But I thought, overall, we got through the game well and scored some fantastic tries. We nailed our game plan basically so I am happy, but we’ve got to continue this momentum now.”

Rovers were without half-backs Martyn Ridyard (shoulder) and Tom Holmes, who has a season-ending knee injury.

But Duffy hailed the new pairing of Matty Wildie and Anthony Thackeray. He said: “They have taken over in the halves and really bought into how we want to play. They have got that game plan going for us with Keal [Carlile] through the middle, who has been great all year.

“We stuck to what we wanted to do and built pressure and scored some fantastic tries with just pushing through that middle area, which is where we wanted to go [on Sunday].”