Mrs Barista wrote:Whilst on paper it's a great draw, according to AP's programme notes their chairman is massively up for expecting them to cause an upset and anything could happen; e.g. if we lost Connor with Sneyd, Kelly, Westerman and Abdull all unavailable we'd really struggle IMO. Sounds like Radford will be taking a strong squad so would expect something like the squad that beat Cas with Sneyd and Westerman dropping out and Washbrook and Miloudi coming in?
I haven't seen Mark Campbell quoted as saying anything like that but to be fair he's not going to say "yeah it will be little more than a training run-out for your lads, barely worth your supporters showing up", this is a bit of a money-spinner for a part-time Championship club to draw such a well-supported club as Hull FC.
In all honesty, given some fairly ordinary Championship clubs have scored plenty of tries past us this season (and Doncaster scored three in the 1st half in the previous round) I suspect you'll put up a big score against us, mind you I thought that in 1983 too, but it's a different game these days and we have regularly shipped huge scores even against out-of-form SL opposition in the middle 8s the last couple of years. We also had a gruelling game in France on Saturday when we were well beaten. We can play some attractive rugby on our day though and it will be interesting to see if we can trouble a SL defence at all.
Expect to read and hear lots about Luke Briscoe this week, he's already broken Martin Offiah's summer-era record for consecutive games coring a try and if he can score one on Thursday he'll equal the all-time record. Might turn out to be unlucky that he runs into a quality SL team right on the threshold of the record but he deserves the attention as he's been our best player this year and one of the most improved players I've seen in years, I'll be interested to see if he can give you any problems as it's another world winning the collisions against a SL team (as he regularly does at Championship level, habitually earning about 3 penalties per game as the opposition desperately tries to stop his quick play-the-balls).
Safe journey for everyone coming over from Hull.
