DOES IT MATTY TO YOU?

[josie andrews]

Back to Winning Ways

17/03/2015 09:55:50

Hi guys,

How you doing? Everyone looking forward to the Leeds game this week?

It's great that we're going into it after a win against Hull and having put in a lot better a performance than the previous week at Castleford, where we really didn't get going. To be fair to Cas, they played really well. They scored some early points and we never really recovered from that. Our defence - as you can tell with conceding seven tries - was awful on the night.

It was great to fix it this week. We put in a lot better performance against Hull. There's loads more that we need to improve on and get better at, but we're going in the right direction and to get the two points was the main thing.

Coming off the back of the Cas game, we were in the morning after at 7am. We had to watch the game all the way through and that was painful. We were in again on Sunday in the wrestling pit, working on the little things and on the defensive side we worked really hard all week.

The start was massive against Hull and I think that was down to our defence. The line speed was great, our contact was good and our third man was a lot better. To be honest, I think we missed a few opportunities and we could have easily been up by 20 or 30 points by half-time.

We tried something a little bit different with our shape, we knew our attack had to sharpen up a bit on the back of the Cas game. Maybe we were just trying to get used to that, but a couple of times, if the pass had been better or the skill had been better, we could have put some more points on the board.

But that's good, they're little things and things we can improve on. Our skill is one area that we've really looked at in training and on video and it's something we massively need to improve on this week. Leeds scramble really well, our skill has to be bob on if we're going to score points.

It's Leeds away, so you don't need any getting up for that game. They've been probably the most successful side in the Super League era, so you know when you come up against them it's going to be a tough game and you have to be at your best. But I think that suits us. Coming up against players like Burrow, Maguire and Sinfield, you wanna play against the best players, so we're looking forward to it.

We need to stop their individuals, so us as edges need to really step up. We know our middles will rip in, but as edges we're going to have to control their outside backs and make our one-on-one tackles. To be honest, it's probably a game we need - a really intense one.

Speaking of intense, Taulima Tautai has done his chilli challenge today and he's probably still feeling ill now. Our chef got hold of a Scotch Bonnet and after half of that and about five pints of water, he was a little worse for wear!

Larne Patrick has had to roll the dice again too, he's got done for the third time. He got confused about training today and went to the wrong place. He swears it wasn't his fault, but everyone else made it on time, only him and Ben Flower were late. They both had to roll and Ben got red arse, so he'll be standing there while we all kick a ball at him, and Larne has to do a song and dance in front of all the lads.

It's not just about the dice though, we've also got a crossbar challenge competition going on, where the loser gets the coffees in that day and the one who's lost most at the end of the season will have to buy dinner for everyone.

If you hit the bar you're through and the last person left is the loser. We've done it for five weeks now and it's dead even, with five people on a point. Shaun Wane is always in the bottom two, but he's got really lucky so far and never had to pay up yet. Hopefully that will have changed by next time.

Speak to you soon,
Matty

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