Rotherham Titans welcome the challenge North Herefordshire side Luctonians will bring this weekend as they look to maintain their unbeaten start in Nat 2 North; kick-off at Clifton Lane on Saturday is 2pm.
Luctonians currently find themselves in the lower half of the table; however, this is mainly due to the fact they have played two games fewer than most sides owing to the effects of Covid-19 and Titans are in no doubt as to the challenge they will face.
Irrespective of league position Titans will give due respect to all opposition and especially to Luctonians after they secured an impressive away win at Huddersfield on their last outing, which means they will arrive at Clifton Lane full of confidence.
Rotherham will also go into the game with some confidence having attained a good win themselves last week away at Hull Ionians, which also saw the South Yorkshire side pick-up a bonus point for their efforts.
Roth will however hope to start the match on Saturday with more intensity than in recent games, having gone in at half time in their last 5 outings behind on the scoreboard.
Going into the weekend Rotherham have made seven changes to their starting XV, with three of those changes coming in the backline.
Joe Carlisle will start ay fly half as Jonny West moves across into the 9 shirt for Matty Drennan; Mat Clark returns at outside centre as Lloyd Hayes moves to full back in place of Tom Lewis and rounding of the changes Connor Field comes in on the wing for George Tucker who drops to the bench.
Up front Colin Quigley gets the nod this week at tighthead over Rikki Stout and Fran Entressengle makes his first start for the club in place of Harry Newborn at hooker; whilst in the back row Keifer Laxton comes in for Harry Williams and Theo Nwosu-Hope comes in for skipper Zak Poole; Matt Challinor will captain the side in Poole’s absence.
Looking ahead to the game Titans’ Steve Salvin said:
“Against Ionians last week we had a poor first half and a very good second half, and frustratingly that has been a bit of a theme away from home this season.
“We obviously need to address our poor starts, which we have tried to do, but the boys have shown immense resilience to get themselves back into games and they did that again in the second half last week.
“It will be the same again this week, in that I fully expect Luctonians to come out fast and play with an aggressive high tempo and we will again speak about managing the start better, but we need to make sure that we impose ourselves and our quality on to them, rather than it being the other way around.
“Luctonians are a talented, attacking team and if you look at some of the results they’ve had they back that up. They had a fantastic result away at Huddersfield a couple of weeks ago and that is by no means an easy place to go, particularly on the back of what was probably a four hour plus bus journey for them.
“So we can’t make any assumptions that it will be anything other than a real dog-fight and a real tussle. We’ll give them all the respect that they deserve, but ultimately the intention will be to start well and hopefully win the game.”
Titans: 15 Lloyd Hayes, 14 Connor Field, 13 Mat Clark, 12 Harry Dunne, 11 Jamie Cooke, 10 Joe Carlisle, 9 Jonny West, 1 Charlie Capps, 2 Fran Entressengle, 3 Colin Quigley, 4 Matt Challinor (Capt.), 5 Matt Smith, 6 Theo Nwosu-Hope, 7 Keifer Laxton, 8 Callum Bustin.
Replacements: 16 Harry Newborn, 17 Alastair Donkor, 18 Rikki Stout, 19 Matti Williams, 20 George Tucker.
