MORRISON PREVIEWS ROBINS TRIP

We spoke with Academy Head Coach Glenn Morrison ahead of the trip to play Hull KR tomorrow evening.

Glenn gave his overall thoughts heading into the game: “Everyone’s looking forward to it. Obviously it was a tight loss last time out which was tough, we want to rectify things there and get on the board. The boys have trained really hard this fortnight and are ready to go. It’s been switched across from home because of the pitch so it's now in Hull. That’s a bit of a change but the boys are ready.”

When asked whether travelling would affect preparations, Glenn replied “It will do yeah. We have to get over there early doors so we’ve changed training up this week to suit. We'll be in tonight and sorting out some last bits. The boys will have to get out of work to get there early and get over on time. So, it's a little bit different. Obviously playing away from home is different to your home patch, they are just little things that all teams have to deal with. We know we’re playing away, we know what time we have to be there, and we know how to prepare so hopefully we’ll be alright and it won’t come into play.”

Last time out, the Academy conceded late on to suffer a tough home defeat against the Warrington Wolves. Glenn addressed what he was hoping would be different this time, “We’re just after some consistency for 80 minutes. I know it’s a cliche to say play for 80 minutes but in the games so far, we’ve either not started well and come home strong or we’ve started strong and just haven't been able to hold on. So, it’s just being a little bit smarter at times with better game management. We’ve been working on that especially with our halves. This will be the first game that we’ve had the same spine for two weeks in a row. We’ve had to chop and change because of injuries so hopefully we’ll get a few more combinations now that we have a similar squad to last time out.” 

There was an update on the injury front, “We’re missing Sam Spencer, he got a concussion in the Warrington game so he’s out with the head protocol. But apart from that everyone else is available so I can't see too many changes on the performance the boys put in. We’ll see how things are finalised tonight and how they pan out in training and then we’ll try and work out the team.” 

After a tricky start to the season, we asked what Glenn would say to motivate his squad ahead of the game. He replied “I don’t think we have to motivate them, they can see it themselves. They’re disappointed to not get the results but pleased with the performances they’ve been able to put in. They’re playing good rugby but just haven’t been able to get the two points and that's that. They can see it and they know the little tweaks we need to do and they’re ready to go. They know they should be on the board and up the table. But they’re not and that's motivation in itself.” 

Credit: Matthew Richardson