Rotherham Titans will look to maintain the momentum gained against Chester last time out when they travel to Preston Grasshoppers in round 13 of Nat 2 North on Saturday; kick-off at Lightfoot Green Lane is 2pm.
Following a couple of disappointing results Rotherham put in a good performance last week with an impressive 26-21 win over an in-form Chester side and they’ll be keen to build on that this weekend.
However, a closer inspection of Hoppers recent results clearly shows they have improved as the season has progressed.
Last time out they shared a 22-all draw with Blaydon, with the week before narrowly losing by a point (22-21) to high-flyers Hull Ionians. As such Titans will be aware of the dangers Preston will pose and they’ll give the North West outfit maximum respect, as they do all teams.
The two sides have met twice before in the league with the score standing at 1 each. Hoppers won the first-ever encounter 10-6 in National 4 North back in March 1993 at Lightfoot Green Lane, whilst Roth narrowly came out on top 12 months later with a 11-10 win at Clifton Lane.
Another close game is anticipated this weekend and Roth will need to be on song if they are to get any kind of result.
Going into the match Titans have made five changes to their starting XV, four of which come in the forwards.
In the front row Harry Newborn comes in at hooker for Jack Bergmanas and Gareth Denman comes in for Danny Rylance at tighthead prop; whilst Theo Nwosu-Hope gets the nod over Lewis Allan in the second row and Callum Bustin returns in the back row for Rupert Kay.
The one change across the backline sees Sam Boxhall come in at scrum half for Kai Ramrattan.
Speaking ahead of the game Titans forwards coach, Matt Smith said:
“We’re currently a team that’s struggling a little bit for confidence and we’re trying to build that up week on week, but it’s going to take a bit of time to get to where we want to be.
“We saw against Chester we had moments on their line where we didn’t quite manage to come away with anything and good teams in those situations do come away with points and if our confidence was a little higher I think we would have too.
“So we’ll aim to improve again when we go to Preston Grasshoppers. We know it’s not going to be easy; they showed a couple of weeks ago how good they are when they lost by a point to Hull Ionians; we’ll also have to adapt to their artificial surface, but the boys are capable of doing that.
“We’ll go there and give Preston the upmost respect, as we do for every team we play against. Our set piece went well last week and we’ll be looking to keep that going, but we like to play rugby too and the lads will be looking to get some quick ball and show what they can do.”
Titans: 15 Sam Veall, 14 Fraser Jones, 13 Jack Taylor, 12 Harry Dunne, 11 Ollie Parker, 10 Lloyd Hayes, 9 Sam Boxhall, 1 Charlie Capps, 2 Harry Newborn, 3 Gareth Denman, 4 Matt Challinor, 5 Theo Nwosu-Hope, 6 Callum Bustin, 7 Marcus Payne, 8 Zak Poole (Capt.).
Replacements: 16 Louis Inman, 17 Danny Rylance, 18 Cade Cambier, 19 Corben Ollivent, 20 Kai Ramrattan.
