Chester in confident mood after KR victory over Hull FC
Hull KR Chris Chester was very pleased with the performance which saw his team beat Hull FC on Sunday to claim the Clive Sullivan Trophy.
Although the game was classed as a preseason friendly, 9445 people attended a fiercely fought encounter at the KC Stadium.
Rovers fought back from a second half scoreline of 22-6 to Hull to win the game 28-22, with new players like Terry Campese and Albert Kelly starring.
Chester was pleased with the team’s performance and anticipates further improvement once the season starts in earnest.
“We’ve got a lot of exciting players and people like Campese, Kelly and Kenny Sio will only get better,” the coach told his club’s official website.
“Campese is a great player and he steadied the ship for us in that second half and Albert is a freak at times. He’s still not match fit but we’ll get him there.
“It’s great working with players of their calibre and you’ve got Maurice Blair to think about as well. The whole team excites me every time we take to the training field.
“There were no points up for grabs today and it’s about building momentum for Leeds. We’ve targeted these two games against Hull and Warrington to build some confidence within the group and we did that.
“We’ve got to get better with the ball and defensively we’ve got a lot of things to work on but I’m more than confident that going in that Leeds came on February 8th that we’ll be ready.”
Despite the good performance, Chester still identified areas which required improvement in his team.
“I was happy with that performance. I thought we dominated for 45 to 50 minutes of that game and we’ll get a lot better for the hit out,” he said.
“We weren’t fluent with the ball which was to be expected. We’ve had people like Terry Campese and Albert Kelly here for three or four weeks but we’ll take a lot of positives from today.
“They started the game strongly and they kept beating us up off the floor for the first 30 minutes but once we got some momentum and some field position I thought we looked good.
“We spoke at half-time about a few things we needed to fix up and we did that. We were always confident that we’d get over the top of them and I’m really pleased for the boys and the fans.”