Daryl Powell stresses Wakefield Trinity stars' Ashes case, warns improvement needed v Leigh Leopards
‘Numerous’ Wakefield men are capable of forcing their way into the England squad to play Australia this year, according to Trinity coach Daryl Powell.
The first Ashes series since 2003 will be played in this country in October and November and Powell is confident his club will be represented. “Mike McMeeken and Tom Johnstone are already in the squad and we’ve got numerous players who are capable of doing it,” the former Great Britain star said.
“I don’t think we’re deep enough into the season yet and a couple of those players have missed a few games - people like Jake Trueman. You need to play consistently well to get a chance to play in the international team, but we’ve certainly got a few who are in and among it and we should have a few more who are capable of getting to that level.”
However, the coach - whose side visit Leigh Leopards tomorrow (Friday) - stressed club form comes first. “We need to be more consistent and get some more games under our belt before we start talking about that,” he said.
Trinity have a 100 per cent away record this year, but are on the back of a 16-12 loss at home to Hull FC last time out and Powell insisted: “We have got to look to improve.
“We made too many errors last week so we’ve got to tidy up. We know it will be another tough challenge, their squad is pretty much full-strength and we’re not by any stretch of the imagination, but we are in a good place, I think.
“We are battling hard and we are close in pretty much all the games so far. We just need to tweak a couple of areas and cut out the errors, get our completion rate up a bit and give ourselves a chance of applying pressure to the opposition.”
Trinity meet Leigh again at home next Friday in a Betfred Challenge Cup quarter-final. “That second game will be an interesting one; we’ll see what this week’s like, how good we can be and what happens during the game and then we’ll take it from there,” Powell stated. “When I’ve been in this situation before you tend to play slightly different in the first game to the second, but we’ll just take one game at a time and make sure we prepare well for this one.”
Stand-off Trueman could return from a back problem tomorrow and Isaiah Vagana is available following a shoulder injury, but centre Corey Hall misses out after suffering rib damage last week. Josh Rourke will continue at full-back, with Max Jowitt still ruled out because of a leg injury. Of Jowitt, Powell said: “We haven’t got a time scale; we've got over a week before the Cup game and will just see how he goes as he gets back on his feet and see how quickly he gets back to full strength in his leg.”
Leigh Leopards: from Armstrong, Niu, Hanley, Charnley, O’Brien, Lam, Trout, Ipape, Mulhern, Halton, Hughes, Liu, Pene, Tuitavake, Davis, Dwyer, Brand, Brogan, O’Neill, McNamara, Hodgson
Wakefield Trinity: from Walmsley, Scott, Johnstone, Trueman. O Russell, McMeeken, Hood, Rodwell, Griffin, Pitts, Hamlin-Uele, Atoni, Vagana, Pratt, Lino, Cozza, Rourke, M Russell, Croft, Smith, Faatili.
Referee: Marcus Griffiths (Widnes). Kick-off: Friday, 8pm.