Kingstone Press Championship Preview: Whitehaven v Dewsbury Rams

Whitehaven coach James Coyle was disappointed with his side’s performance against Workington Town.

“We’ve spoken this week about why it happened and why we were so poor in comparison to how well we’ve been playing,” he said.

“Workington have only won against ourselves and Doncaster, so I think you’ve got to say it’s a mental issue on our part, not being able to perform as well as we can do against them.

“It’s something we’re going to have to resolve in the Final 8 because we will play them again.

“We fell away against Workington last week and maybe a little bit against London the week before, if I’m honest. Dewsbury are going really well and it’s going to be a tough weekend for us to bounce back from the defeat against Workington.

Dewsbury Rams did the double over London Broncos last week.

Coach Glenn Morrison said: “It was a must-win for both teams and it had a finals-football feel to it. We came away with our best performance of the season, which was very pleasing.

“The goal is to be peaking at the right time of the year. We got it right last year and the last couple of games we’ve had wins over some top competition so hopefully we can keep that momentum and confidence going into this second part of the season and get something out of it.

“It’s always tough travelling up to Whitehaven, it puts the form guide out of the window a little bit. We’ve been speaking about going in with the same mentality that we’ve had for the last two weeks. We can’t afford to drop down, we’ve got to keep raising the bar.

“If we go up there and perform like we can, then I’m sure we’ll get the result we want but if we’re a little bit off, they’re likely to sneak it.”

Centre Karl Pryce is doubtful due to a broken toe while hooker Nathan Conroy got a knock to the head and is being assessed.