Radford pinpoints Hull’s attacking weakness

Hull FC coach Lee Radford believes that his team need to sharpen up their attacking ploys if they are to improve this season.

The Airlie Birds lost 13-12 at Wigan on Friday evening, and Radford felt that his team’s defensive efforts were commendable.

But a failure to use the little possession they had well really cost them, and he will looking to work on that attacking weakness this week.

“Over 80 minutes, territorially, we’ve come off second best, and pretty much spent 80 minutes coming out of our own end,” he said, after Friday’s game.

“The effort with which they defended, and the willingness they showed to defend for each other was fantastic.

“One area of improvement for us is when we get down their end of the field and being prepared to build a little bit of pressure.

“We didn’t do that, and that’s an improvement for us to make for Friday night’s game against Catalans.

“Territory was the difference, we just had none.

“That was obviously a massive plus for them, but, at the same time, it’s been a massive plus for us how we’ve gone about defending.

“So I’m really pleased with that.

“We just need to smarten up with the ball, and be prepared to build a bit of pressure down their end with our kick play.

“If we get that right, then results will start swinging our way quite soon.”

It was the team’s lack of nous on last tackles which Radford felt was particularly important.

“We made, for me, a couple of dumb decisions on last plays with our kick options,” he added.

“We’ve got to be prepared to make them work and make them come out, and we’ve tried a couple of kick plays that were high risk plays.

“We had no ball, yet we were still rolling the dice.

“I’m going to question that decision when I speak to the players, and try and find out what they thoguht process was that they were going through, the kickers in particular.

“Hopefully we can eradicate that, and be a little bit more prepared to build.”