Rotherham Titans will this week face a stern examination when they travel to table-toppers Fylde in round 17 of Nat 2 North; kick-off on Saturday at The Woodlands is 3pm.
Fylde currently sit top of the pile on 67 points having won 14 of their 15 outings, with their sole defeat coming away to second placed side Sedgley Park, who themselves are unbeaten this season and have a game in hand.
Indeed, when Fylde visited Clifton Lane back in October they ran out worthy 41-16 winners and looked a class act as they outscored Roth by 5 tries to 1.
Nevertheless, Titans will travel to the sea-side club full of determination and with nothing to lose, as they look to cause a major upset at the top of the league.
Going into the game Roth have made just one change to the starting XV that lost to Tynedale last time out.
Marcus Payne comes into the back row as Callum Bustin moves to inside centre following an injury to winger Jack Hedley, which in turn has led to a reshuffle across the backline which sees Lloyd Hayes go to outside centre, Jack Taylor on to the wing and Sam Veall to full back.
Speaking ahead of the match Titans head coach, Gary Pearce said:
“When you look at the league table you’d say it’s going to be a tough challenge for us; but as we all know rugby is rugby, it’s still 15 Vs 15 and anything can happen.
“They’re obviously having a very good season; they play a very expansive brand of rugby and we have to try and control them and express ourselves and try to be dominant against them. If we don’t, then they’ll play their brand of rugby which is very exciting and very dangerous.
“They are obviously full of confidence and we’re in no doubt it’s going to be a very tough, but to be fair we’ve only had one session with the players since I’ve come in and things aren’t going to change overnight and we know we have a really tough run of fixtures coming up as we take on the top 3 in the next 4 weeks.
“So we know it’s going to be a difficult period; we have a few boys playing out of position and we have a few injuries like most teams at this time of the year, but we’ll knuckle down, dig in and just get on with the job in hand.”
Titans: 15 Sam Veall, 14 Jack Taylor, 13 Lloyd Hayes, 12 Callum Bustin, 11 Luckas Sableman-Blue, 10 Connor Dever, 9 Sam Boxhall, 1 Charlie Capps, 2 Jack Bergmanas, 3 Gareth Denman, 4 Matt Challinor, 5 Lewis Allan, 6 Theo Nwosu-Hope, 7 Marcus Payne, 8 Zak Poole (Capt.).
Replacements: 16 Tom Richardson, 17 Danny Rylance, 18 Cade Cambier, 19 Kai Ramrattan, 20 George Tucker.
