Gareth Ellis - Hull FC will be making the most of our unexpected play-offs chance

SO, we do get a chance to go for a Grand Final after all.

Everyone at Hull FC is looking at this week just as a great opportunity.

Let’s crack on and for us it is a brilliant chance to do something. Our season would be over now if they had not decided to change the play-offs from top-four to top-six on Tuesday; it’s a free crack at winning.

The way we’ve built under Andy Last these last few months we have been heading in the right direction. I know we’re all judged on what we do on game day and that has steadily improved – we’ve won four of our last five games – but there has really been a great switch in attitude in training as well. There’s been a buy-in to what Lasty has tried to subtly change given the circumstances and difficulties you have when taking a team on mid-pandemic and a sacking mid-season, too.

We just see it as a crack at taking that on a little bit further and the prize, obviously, is potentially a Grand Final.

We go to Warrington to face them on Thursday and obviously, with our recent form, we go into it in a good place.

Play-off rugby has always been about peaking at the right time. So very often the team that finishes top that probably has been the best team over the course of the season not necessarily goes on and wins the Grand Final. You can almost peak too soon.

From that respect we are playing as well as we have all year so, in terms of coming good at the right time – without knowing what would unfold – we might have achieved that. But we come up against the best teams now and teams we wanted to be in with in the top-four.

We didn’t get there in the end. We finished sixth.

So now we have to show we can compete with them and now’s the time to do it.

Warrington are a great side and full of players that are almost internationals in every position.

I suppose the challenge we expect from them is that we know they have players who have been there and done it all before, in Australia and this side of the world. We’d be expecting them to be ready for it.

Yet, if we were picking anyone from that top three, the way Wigan and Saints have been playing of late, Warrington would be the one we’d choose to play but that’s not to say it won’t be a tough task for us given we have only just come into some decent form this last month or so.

In terms of how we have made that improvement, defence is something we’ve worked on very hard.

Lasty and Kieron Purtill have had a big input on that.

Beforehand, I was sat at home watching games screaming at the TV and every time a team got onto our tryline I almost felt they were going to score.

That’s more an attitude thing really. But Lasty has brought that change of attitude and – ask any coach or any player – defence is all about that and the willingness to want to defend and stop the opposition from crossing the line.

I’ve seen that change at Hull. That’s been the single biggest factor – how our defence has improved – and everything else comes off the back of that.

When you look at individuals as well and look at some of the early form of one or two players – Jake (Connor) was shuffled around a bit but he’s started to find some form.

Some of that is down to Jake but some of it is down to how he’s been managed and encouraged and criticised in the right and proper way.

Mahe Fonua is another one who was very indifferent in his form at the beginning of the year and Lasty had to have some tough conversations with both those players. Ultimately it seems to have brought the best out of them.

As for me, as nice as it would be to have a last push, I think only coronavirus and a load of injuries would see me getting in now.

But if we do get there, Lasty just has to let me be a ball boy at the Grand Final!

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