Kingstone Press Championship Preview: Halifax v Doncaster

Halifax are looking to bounce back from a poor performance at Sheffield Eagles last week.

“It was probably the first time this season where we never looked like winning,” said coach Richard Marshall. “In the second half we made a better fight of it but we’d left ourselves too much to do in the first half with some poor defensive decisions.

“The positive is that’s a blip, that’s not how we’ve been playing. It was uncharacteristic of us to concede some of those tries off kicks etc.

“Doncaster did very well against Bradford, I don’t think there’s any other team who have scored as many points against them this year.

“They’ve obviously got their attacking boots on and I’m sure they’ll be speaking about improving defensively, as will we. If we can limit them in terms of their attacking form we should be OK.

“We need to get better with the ball and not put ourselves under pressure so much.”

Looking back on stirring performance at Bradford coach Paul Cooke said: “We’ve worked a hell of a lot on our attack over the last couple weeks having scored an average of just 12 points in the first nine weeks.

“We brought Jordan Abdull in from Hull, who teamed up with Ben (Reynolds) in the halves, and it looked a lot better. Matt Groat certainly added something to the squad in the middle so we were something like in attack.

“Obviously conceding so many points is not great but we’re not going to be playing against a full-time team every week.

“They’re going to finish in the top two in this division, it’s as simple as that and we’ve done well to score some points against them which other teams haven’t managed.

“I’d say it’s a little bit of a step forward and this week we’ll work a hell of a lot more on defence. It will certainly be a tough test against Richard Marshall and his team at the weekend.”

Half-back Ben Reynolds is a doubt having suffered concussion last week.