SIMON SMITH: Late victory shows our resolve

It wasn’t a vintage performance, we didn’t deserve to win the game at all and with five minutes left on the clock, I’d have happily settled for two losing bonus points.

A mixture of their gameplan making life very difficult for us and conditions didn’t help us, we just couldn’t get going and get any consistency in our game on Saturday.

We have set the bar high this season, and while we didn’t hit our straps on Saturday, the guys dug in and stuck at it and to come away with a win like that shows the hunger, commitment and resolve of the players.

At the end of the season, we might just look back on Saturday as the day we grabbed the crucial points that won us promotion.

Lots of teams will go to Old Rish’ and struggle, so to come away with a win is a great outcome for us.

We gave away too many penalties on Saturday, and any error we made was punished as they had a guy who made every kick he attempted in our half.

That is something we need to work on going forward and we’ll need to put that right.

There were a few stand-out individual performances for us.

Ben Martin continued his fine form with three tries.

He’s been playing fantastically for us all season, he gets into good positions and exploits them for us.

It was great to have Sam Dawson and Nino Cutino back with us on Saturday too, albeit from the bench,

Having said that, Mikey Whitton is gunning for a starting spot and was my man of the match on Saturday.

Mikey was exceptional in the first half and deserves the same plaudits that Paul Taylor was given last week.

There’s a selection headache brewing with five talented lads vying for three spots in the front row.

We have skipper Matty Jones, Dawson, Cutino, Taylor and Whitton contesting starting spots, so this week’s selection meeting will certainly be interesting.

These are good problems to have as a coach though, and we’ll need to be at our best to get anything from a very tough game against a solid Heath side at Silver Royd on Saturday.