Castleford Tigers tips boost Hunslet RLFC coach ahead of milestone 5,000th fixture
Hunslet RLFC coach Kyle Trout has spent time with Castleford Tigers this week ahead of his club’s historic 5,000th game on Sunday.
The Parksiders will reach the milestone when they play host to Oldham in the Betfred Championship (3pm). Trout took time off from his own preparations to shadow Tigers’ training as they got ready for Sunday’s Super League derby at home to Leeds Rhinos.
Trout said: “They do the same things we are trying to do and it’s good to see how a Super League club works at this. It’s my first year as a head-coach and this is valuable experience.”
Tigers have recalled on-loan forward Sam Grice and Hunslet will also be without Billy Jowitt who suffered a broken arm against London Broncos two weeks ago. However, Trout insisted: “We’ve had good numbers at training this week and we’ll be able to put a strong team out against Oldham which we were unable to do on both our visits to Stalybridge earlier in the year. It resonates with the lads what an important milestone 5,000 games is for this club and they are proud to pull on the Myrtle, White and Flame for this important fixture.”
The team boss admitted: “Billy is a loss as he is dynamic in attack, but we can work around it. Jimmy Watson and Charlie Graham will take up the slack, but with Mackenzie Turner back we still have a potent attack.
“For the first time in six weeks, we have rotating hookers as Cam Berry and Aiden Doolan are fit. We battled hard at Oldham earlier in the year and matched them for periods, but being short of numbers cost us off the bench.
“Oldham are in hot form at the moment, but Batley pushed them all the way last week so there is no reason we can’t get something from the game. The lads are aware we’ve been beaten by individual errors in games this year; with a big six games coming up, if we follow our process, cut out the errors, defend well and be confident in attack we can pick up points.”