Rotherham Titans go into round 11 of the Greene King IPA Championship on Sunday ready to be tested by County rivals Yorkshire Carnegie; kick-off at Emerald Headingley Stadium is 3pm.
As the halfway point of the season arrives this weekend Titans find themselves at the bottom of the pile on three points and still searching for their first league win of the campaign.
The South Yorkshire side were hugely disappointed at not securing their first Championship victory last weekend as visitors to Clifton Lane, London Scottish, snatched victory in the last play of the game in the tenth minute of injury time.
Rotherham will need to put their frustrations behind them this weekend as they face the testing challenge of Carnegie. The Leeds based outfit will be full of confidence on the back of their 20-10 away victory over Jersey Reds last time out and with Rotherham not having won at Headingley since a 6-0 victory back in 2014, they will be fully aware of the task ahead.
Going into the game Titans have made 3 changes to their starting XV. Along a reshuffled backline Lee Millar comes in and will start at full back as Will Thomas moves onto the wing and Drew Cheshire slides across into the centres.
Whist in the pack Toby Williams is given the nod at loosehead prop over Tom Williams and Matt Postlethwaite comes into the second row as Adam Peters moves to number 8 in place of Tom Burns.
Commenting ahead of the clash, Titans head coach and former Yorkshire Carnegie Director of Rugby, Andy Key, explained, “Last week’s defeat against London Scottish was hugely disappointing for everybody at the club. It was particularly difficult to take because we know we’d done enough in the game, although there were areas in which we could have been better.
“The whole essence of how we went into the game and how we needed to play and adapt at times, we thought the game was ours. And being 17-7 and 24-20 up, to then have it cruelly taken away from us at the end was very difficult to take. But ultimately we can only look at ourselves as to why we lost the game.
“As a group we have to put that disappointment behind us and concentrate on our next game this weekend against Yorkshire Carnegie. We know we’ll have a hard task on our hands against Carnegie, but we’ve already moved on from the Scottish game and the lads have built on the confidence they got from what they did last week in what we thought should have been a winning performance.”
Titans: 15 Lee Millar, 14 Will Thomas, 13 Drew Cheshire, 12 Logan Tibbetts, 11 Ben Foley, 10 Caolan Ryan, 9 Rhodri Davies, 1 Toby Williams, 2 Luke Cole, 3 Matt Shields, 4 Matt Postlethwaite, 5 Byron Hodge, 6 Tom Calladine (Capt.), 7 Charlie Maddison, 8 Adam Peters.
Replacements: 16 Jonny Murphy, 17 Tom Williams, 18 Brandon Palmer, 19 James Lasis, 20 Tom Burns, 21 Jamie Cooke, 22 Wesley Hamilton.
