Destiny is in our own hands, says Poching

Hull KR coach Chris Chester is looking at rotating his squad heading into this weekend’s trip to Huddersfield Giants.
Albert Kelly. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)Albert Kelly. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)
Albert Kelly. (Picture: Bruce Rollinson)

The Robins will play their third match in 10 days on Sunday, after their Challenge Cup quarter-final win over Catalans Dragons and Tuesday’s Super League win against Salford.

Those victories actually extended Rovers’ winning sequence to four games – all at the KC Lightstream Stadium – in June.

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Chester was forced to rest several players against the Red Devils, but with just four games of the regular season remaining, the race is on to reach the Super 8s.

“We have got to try and freshen the players up, physically, mentally they are in a good space,” said Robins assistant coach Willie Poching.

“They have some momentum and confidence.

“We have a couple of players who didn’t perform (on Tuesday), we rested one or two, and we haven’t been in that position for a long time where we can put someone on ice for a little bit. It’s nice to have that luxury.

“There will be some selection headaches. It’s hectic, but we have got to do our best to freshen them up.”

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Hull KR are two points ahead of Hull FC – with the cross-city rivals due to meet later this month.

Poching added: “We’re into the eight now and our destiny is in our own hands, which is the position we wanted to be in because we don’t want to be dependent on other teams’ results.

“We’ve had four good wins at home now and we’ve got some confidence and some momentum behind us but we’ve got some points to play for and we need to keep it up.”

Hull KR were poor in the opening 40 minutes against Salford, fortunate to only trail 10-8.

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But after the break they ripped into the visitors and led 26-10 before being pegged back at 28-28.

It took a moment of brilliance from Australian scrum-half Albert Kelly, gathering possession from the restart, to grab an unlikely 34-28 victory.

“There was a little bit of twitching at the end there but credit to the boys for staying in the arm wrestle and getting into a lead at the start of the second half,” said Poching.

“We had to do too much defending in the first half through some errors and trying to overplay a bit.

“We needed to show some patience and when we did, we got some rewards from it.

“We completed five sets in a row during that spell in the second half and scored three tries,” he added.