Green back as Rovers look to end Cup woes at St Helens

Rovers head to Widnes tomorrow knowing to reach the semi-finals they must overcome a fabled club that has won the famous competition seven times in the last 15 years.

Saints, who denied Hull KR a place in the 2006 final courtesy of a 50-0 whitewash and defeated them in the quarter-finals three years ago, again showed their class last week by ominously sweeping past form team Catalan Dragons 40-18.

But Morgan has seen his own improving side string together four successive wins to leave them in a positive mindset.

“I don’t know if we could have done anymore over the past month to prepare ourselves for this game,” he said.

“We’ve ticked a lot of boxes in preparation for a big match.

“Realistically, the intensity of this game is going to be a lot higher than what we’ve experienced in the last month (but) we haven’t just cruised through.

“We’ve won four games but we’ve done it having had to battle a few different scenarios.

“We know we’re going to have to be good but we’re not going into the game fearful of St Helens. We understand their record and respect that.

“We have to go in there with the belief that we can go through into the semi-finals and that’s certainly how we feel.”

Rovers’ chances of thwarting their hosts are raised by the return of Australian stand-off Blake Green, who missed last week’s win over Salford and is regarded by Morgan as their player of the campaign given his attacking quality.

However, he will be urging his squad to raise their defensive intensity, importantly, in all areas of the field tomorrow not just their own line where their resilience frustrated Salford.

“We have to stop James Graham, Tony Puletua and Sia Soliola getting a roll on coming out of their own end,” he said.

“Teams don’t always have the same mindset defensively down there but we have to.”