A warm welcome to everyone at Cougar Park today for our Northern Rail Cup play off match against Batley Bulldogs!

Today's match should be an opportunity for our team to purely focus on winning the match as opposed to it being important for our position in the league. Winning this match will not be easy as Batley are very tough opponents but a good Northern Rail Cup performance should be something to target as it will generally lift the confidence of the team and the fans.

We are 2nd from bottom in the Kingstone Press Championship league but we are only 4 points adrift of 6th place! Below the bottom 5 the situation is very tight and I believe that the 2 relegation places will be settled on the last day of the season. We have a game in hand on some of the teams and it is imperative that, when we resume the league fixtures next week, we create momentum to ensure we are not one of the teams fighting for survival on the final day of the season. A good performance today will be instrumental in ensuring we create this momentum which we must follow up against Leigh next week. This will then put us in a good position for the Workington match the following Thursday. We are not yet halfway through the league season and our forwards have dominated virtually all the matches. Our backs haven't fully clicked as yet and I know that Paul is working hard to put this right with the signing of James Haley, looking for further opportunities out there and working hard with the squad as well. One of the key factors will be to cut out individual mistakes, which cost us against Dewsbury, and to play with confidence whatever happens on the field. Our squad is much better than our current league position so I am sure we will see some excellent performances in the coming weeks.

Finally, a big thank you to Bristol Street Motors and University Academy Keighley for sponsoring the game!

I hope today's match is a great performance from our team and our fans!

Come on Cougars!