Kingstone Press League 1 Preview: London Skolars v Coventry Bears

London Skolars, with coach Jermaine Coleman at stand-off, turned in a good performance at North Wales Crusaders despite going down 18-10.

“It was good but we were still disappointed with the result,” said Coleman. “I think we probably weren’t as clinical as we needed to be to capitalise on the spells we had and ultimately that proved costly.

“I think it’s going to be a tough game against Coventry. I watched their game against Barrow and they played really well. They’ve proved over the course of the season that they’re a force to be reckoned with. I think they’ve done a lot better than people expected and have possibly caught people off guard.

“But we’re fortunate in that we’ve seen them play a little bit now, so there’s no reason for us to be caught off guard. In terms of our boys, it’s really important that we back up last week and take another step forward.

“Hopefully that step forward ends in a win but our aim is to progress and keep taking that step forward. We certainly won’t be taking Coventry lightly at all.”

Coventry coach Tom Tsang said: “Against Barrow we were our own worst enemies at times. We created quite a lot of opportunities.

“We scored one try but two were disallowed and with a little bit better execution we probably should have scored another three.

“We certainly had chances to get a bit more out of the game than we did but on the whole it’s probably the first time against an established club that we’ve competed for close to 80 minutes.

“It was a good response to the disappointment of Gloucester two weeks previously.

“Skolars seem to be improving week on week. The change in coaching at the start of the year seemed quite disrupting for them and they were always going to be off to a slower start but I think Jermaine’s got them going in the right direction.

“Their results have been quite impressive over the last few weeks so I’m expecting a tough game.

“They’re a big set of boys and if we let them dominate the middle it’s going to be a long day but I’m positive, off the back of last week, that our middle have it in them to compete and I’m expecting them to replicate the type of performance they gave last week.

“We’ll be doing everything to break our duck and get an away win.”