Rotherham Titans face a stiff test this weekend when they welcome Birmingham based side Stourbridge in round 22 of National 2 North; kick-off at Clifton Lane on Saturday is 2pm.
Titans currently sit second in the table and are just 4 points and 2 league places ahead of their west midland rivals, following the RFU’s decision to re-instate their 12-10 win over Luctonians last time out.
In a highly competitive division, where all the top four sides have a realistic chance of winning the league, Rotherham are very much aware of the attacking threat they will face at the weekend.
Following an entertaining encounter earlier in the month at Stourton Park which saw Titans run out 48-33 winners, they will remember Stourbridge cutting loose inside the final 20 minutes to run in 4 tries!
Furthermore, Stourbridge will arrive in South Yorkshire on the back of a thumping win last time out where they ran in 12 tries in a 74-17 battering of Harrogate. They can also boast of scoring the most points in the division and of jointly holding the most try-scoring bonus points, along with league leaders Hull.
Nevertheless, Rotherham will feel confident in being back at home in front of their passionate supporters and they will look to maintain their unbeaten home record as they continue to chase down the league leaders.
Going into the match Titans have made 3 changes to their starting XV with in the pack Colin Quigley coming in at loose head prop for Alastair Donkor and Matti Williams coming into the back row as Lewis Wilson moves into the second row for Theo Nwosu-Hope.
The sole change across the backline sees Joe Carlisle return at fly half as Matt Minogue moves to full back for George Tucker.
Speaking ahead of the game Titans’ Adam Byron said:
“The boys were amazing last week at Luctonians; it’s never easy spending three and a half hours on a bus when you’re preparing for a game. It was obviously disappointing to arrive there and find out the first team pitch was completely flooded and we had to play the game on the second team pitch and that wasn’t in much better condition to be fair. However, once you have travelled that far you want to get the game played.
“The conditions for the game were poor, but as we always say it’s the same for both teams and I think in hindsight when we look back at it, with the little bit of wind we had in the first half which was quite strong, we perhaps didn’t perform as well as we would have liked and that meant we went in at half time not in the position we wanted to find ourselves.
“We came out in the second half and in all honestly I was really proud of the boys in how they really gritted it out in very tough conditions to score right at the end. It would have been easy for the boys to have folded, but they came out for the second half and really put in a performance and I was delighted with that.
“We will have to put in that kind of performance against Stourbridge if we are to get the result we want. They showed at their place in the latter stages what a dangerous side they are.
“I expect them to attack us from all areas of the field and that’s what a lot of teams have done at Clifton lane. They’ll have a go, they’ll take chances and sometimes they’ll get the bounce of the ball and we have to make sure we keep those chances to a minimum.
“We’ll need to be disciplined and we’ll need to be switched on and I think if we can reproduce our second half performance from last week, we’ll definitely give ourselves a chance.”
Titans: 15 Matt Minogue, 14 Connor Field, 13 Lloyd Hayes, 12 Harry Dunne, 11 Jamie Cooke, 10 Joe Carlisle, 9 Sam Boxhall, 1 Colin Quigley, 2 Harry Newborn, 27 Rikki Stout, 4 Matt Challinor, 5 Lewis Wilson, 6 Zak Poole (Capt.), 7 Matti Williams, 8 Kieran Curran.
Replacements: 16 Jack Bergmanas, 28 Keifer Laxton, 18 Alastair Donkor, 19 Tom Richardson, 20 George Tucker.
