Rotherham Titans will go into week 2 of National 2 North expecting to be tested to the limit when they travel to Wharfedale for what is one of the toughest away games on the calendar; kick-off on Saturday at The Avenue is 2pm.
Having only registered one win at The Avenue - that coming last season on the back of a remarkable last-play-of-the-game try - Titans don’t need any reminding how difficult a place to go Wharfedale is.
Although set in the beautiful countryside location of Grassington, there is nothing pretty about what to expect on the field of play and if Roth are to come away with anything they’ll need to be at their very best, both mentally and physically.
Both teams will come into the fixture with confidence having recorded wins on the opening weekend; Roth beat Billingham at Clifton Lane 52-24 and Wharfedale went to Lymm and won a tight one 22-21.
Unsurprisingly Titans haven’t made too many changes this week, with the only tweak to the starting XV being Will Milner coming in at fly half. That means Lloyd Hayes goes to outside centre with Harry Dunne dropping to the bench.
Speaking ahead of the game Titans head coach, Gary Pearce said:
“Although our performance against Billingham was a bit patchy, overall we were pleased to score 8 tries, put 50 points on the board and secure a bonus point win in our first run-out.
“It’s easy to be over-critical and we know we can be better, but we are just at the beginning, we made a decent start and we know we can improve going forward.
“And we’ll need to be better this week as Wharfedale is one of the toughest places to go in the division. They are traditionally very strong at home and you see that year on year with the results they have and there’s no reason to think it will be any different this time.
“They had a good start with an away win at Lymm; that will have given them confidence and they’ll be looking forward to giving us a hard game and we wouldn’t expect anything less.
“So if we are to get a result we’ll have to play well and to play well for longer periods than we did against Billingham. We’ll have to be more consistent in terms of keeping the ball and we’ll have to make sure our penalty count isn’t too high.
“And importantly we need to show more patience when we have the ball; you can’t score every time off first phase.
“Sometimes you just have to work the phases a bit more by retaining possession so that you can create the best outcomes from each situation.
“The points will come if we show patience and build the pressure and that’s what we’ll try to do on Saturday.”
Titans: 15 Jack Townend, 14 Dan Rundle, 13 Lloyd Hayes, 12 Callum Bustin, 11 Tomasi Tanumi, 10 Will Milner, 9 JB Bruzulier, 1 Charlie Capps, 2 Jack Bergmanas, 3 Gareth Denman, 4 Matt Challinor, 5 Matt Smith, 6 Rupert Kay, 7 Laurence Cowen-Leak, 8 Zak Poole (Capt.).
Replacements: 16 Luke Cole, 17 Loma Kivalu, 18 Reece Ward, 19 John Okafor, 20 Harry Dunne.
