Best is yet to come from Hull FC with Wembley on the horizon

The Black and Whites were exceptional in Saturday’s 20-10 success over previously unbeaten Wigan and now only St Helens - whom they face in the semi-finals on Saturday, June 5 - stand between them and a place at Wembley.

“It was probably our best this season,” conceded Hodgson.

“In my opinion, we played the second best team in the competition.

“St Helens are obviously up there and Wigan have been at that level for a long time.

“We knew we had to perform at near our best to give ourselves a chance and I believe we took another step forward.

“I still believe there are elements we can improve. The conditions today allowed us to play a little more direct up the middle of the field and I thought we executed that very well.”

Hodgson described the performance of Adam Swift, who switched from wing to full-back in place of the suspended Jake Connor, as “excellent” but hard-running prop Chris Satae claimed man-of-the-match with a stunning two-try display.

He said: “Chris was just phenomenal.

“He is such a big body. I thought he was outstanding.

“He got our sets rolling and we got joy off the back of his play-the-balls.

“I’m really proud of the boys. We learned some lessons from the loss against Wigan last week and we had to be better. We were.”