Canada international challenged to elevate standards at Rotherham Titans
Rotherham Titans chief Harvey Biljon is hoping to see the international standards of fly-half Rob Povey rubbing off on his team-mates as the National One leaders return to training on Tuesday night.
Povey started the first six games of the season in the No 10 shirt as the Titans got their third-tier season off to a flier, winning all six games.
But while he has been away with Canada, Titans’ perfect record came to an end with defeats at Dings Crusaders and most recently, Plymouth Albion. They went into the weekend off still a point clear at the top, but with another difficult trip to Rams coming up this Saturday.
Povey and his team-mates reconvened at Clifton Lane for training on Tuesday night with Biljon’s standards as high as ever.
“It’ll be great to have Rob back,” said Biljon.
“Rob has spent four weeks in a full-time professional environment. They will have been training on a full-time basis, preparing on a full-time basis, so without putting any pressure on him there’s a big difference between the part-time environment and full-time environment so I would like to think he’s sharpened the edges to come and contribute.”
Saturday’s trip to Rams is the first in a block of three games that takes Rotherham up to the festive break, culminating in a visit to resurgent Leeds Tykes on the Saturday before Christmas.
But as ever, Biljon is taking the season one session at a time.
“I don’t look at it as a block, I look at it as tonight’s training session. We’re doing exactly that,” he said.
“Tonight’s (Tuesday’s) part of my address to the players will be to maximise every training session and we don’t look beyond that.
“We will stick to our routine, working on ourselves on Tuesday night and then put in our due diligence on Rams on Thursday night.”