SIMON SMITH: Much improved performance at Percy Park

Although we didn’t come away with the win on Saturday - it was a much-improved performance from the guys.

Percy Park is a tough place to go and we started into a strong wind too.

However, I thought we were good for the first 15 or 20 minutes until astray pass allowed them to nip in and take the lead.

Their second try came after some quick thinking from their number 9 before they scored a great team try - one that we’d have been pleased to score ourselves.

There weren’t any missed tackles for that try, they just had the extra man available and took advantage.

We were 21-0 down before we managed to get ourselves on the scoreboard and we just couldn’t quite claw it back from there.

I have to say, Saturday was our best performance across 80 minutes for a while.

There were a number of pleasing individual performances on the park on Saturday - no more so than Luke Brown.

Luke came to the club from Whitby, moving up in levels at the same time and has really shown a fantastic willingness to learn and improve.

He isn’t the finished article just yet, but he knows that and he’s also so keen to listen and continue improving.

Luke has been consistently solid this season, he puts in his tackles and is aggressive around the park and is quickly becoming a key player.

It was great to see Nino Cutino get a full 80 minutes under his belt as well.

He brings so much to the side and it’s important to have him back in the squad.

This weekend we switch our attentions to a hugely important home game against Huddersfield YMCA at Silver Royd.

They may be bottom of the league without a win so far this season, but that makes it a banana skin for us and we need to ensure that we put in another good performance.

They’ll be looking at us and thinking they have a good chance of turning us over with our poor run of results and it’s upto us to ensure they can’t.

The support, both home and away, has been great this season and I expect that will continue Saturday. The fans appreciate the effort and endeavour the team always put in and understand the challenges we’re facing.