Dark horses Hull full of confidence

Hull coach Peter Gentle says they’re the dark horses in the Super League play-offs, but they will travel to Warrington on Saturday full of confidence.

The Airlie Birds cruised past Huddersfield in their opening play-off game, 46-10, to set up a trip to the Halliwell Jones Stadium to face a Wolves side, still smarting from their home defeat to St Helens on Saturday.

Gentle told the club’s official website: “We are more confident now than we were this time last week. When we play as a team we are very good and we have 1 to 17 putting in the effort at the moment and we are getting our reward.

“We are not here to make the numbers up. Any semi-finals series has a dark horse and maybe that’s us. We know each other pretty well and when we are playing as a team, we are hard to unlock defensively. 

“We have spoken this week about the best defensive team will win the competition. We want that to be us, we saw how aggressive Wigan and St Helens were with their defence and we wanted to match that, and I thought we did.” 

Prior to the Giants win, Gentle emphasised the importance of defence, and he knows that Hull will need to be at their best to beat a strong Warrington team.

Although they were beaten 40-18 by the Wolves in the regular season game at the Halliwell Jones Stadium, Hull did beat Warrington at home 24-10 last season.

The sides fought out a 20-20 draw in the opening round of Super League 2012 at the KC Stadium.