Getting one up on your local rivals is always an added bonus, but when you play particularly well and have the coach singing the team’s praises as a result, you know you have done well – with Hull KR coach Craig Sandercock pleased with his side winning despite Michael Dobson not starting and Travis Burns going off injured.
“It was a pretty special performance today,” said Sandercock.
“To come through a lot of adversity like that is very pleasing.
“Michael trained really well all week and he was fine but, at the end of training yesterday, he pulled up with that hamstring. Things were going well and then he pulled up, but it was good to get a win without Michael Dobson.
“Obviously, Michael won’t be playing on Monday (against Wigan), and we’ll have to assess him during the week. Travis hurt his shoulder and he doesn’t look too good for Monday either. Again, we’ll have to assess the damage.”
It was Craig Hall who stepped into the halves in the absence of the above duo, and Sandercock thought he handled himself extremely well.
“Craig Hall did very well today, as did 16 of his other mates. For Craig to jump in there without having trained in the halves all week and put in a performance like that, it’s pleasing,” said Sandercock.
Without key player Andy Lynch, Hull FC coach Peter Gentle said his side just lacked direction and execution and that errors let his side down massively.
“I got the wake-up call from Lynchy saying he had been vomiting all night. He wasn’t able to play, so the day didn’t start well,” said Gentle.
“Today we just had no direction whatsoever. We lacked experience and we tried to simplify as much as we could to get through, but we’ve got no halves in the club available at the moment to steer us around.
“There were a lot of errors today that were unforced and it was extremely disappointing, we just can’t find our way around the park at the moment.
“We’ve got Wakefield on Monday and we had better come up with some answers pretty quickly.
“We’re struggling, our execution let us down today. We’ve been looking for over 12 months (for a scrum-half) and it’s proving very difficult. Our eyes and ears are always open.”