Hull take on Wigan this Sunday.
Hull FC prop Harvie Hill. (Image: Dave Lofthouse, Hull FC.)
Hull FC face Wigan Warriors on Sunday afternoon, with the Black and Whites heading over the Pennines for their second and final pre-season game.
Taking on the Cherry and Whites in Liam Marshall’s testimonial match, Hull are expected to field a stronger side than the one that met Huddersfield Giants last Sunday, albeit they won’t take any risks with those who are still in the final stages of their recoveries from off-season surgery.
Nonetheless, it’s fair to suggest several more senior faces will join the quartet of new signings – Arthur Romano, Harvie Hill, Sam Lisone, and Connor Bailey – and youth – Lloyd Kemp, Callum Kemp, etc. – who played against Huddersfield, giving a better indication of how the Black and Whites could shape up for competitive action in the Challenge Cup against Salford RLFC the following week.
“We’ll reassess the guys that played,” Cartwright said post-match. “We’ll look at the guys that didn’t play, and we’ll go there with a pretty strong side.”
Doing all they can to prevent injury, Hull – who have overseen surgeries to the likes of John Asiata, Jed Cartwright, and Aidan Sezer, have been extra cautious this pre-season, taking every precaution and method possible in order to get their squad ready for competitive action. Hull’s stance also comes from the fact there are no weeks off now, with Super League clubs fighting on two fronts and hoping to go deep into both the league and cup competitions.
As for the game at Wigan itself, Hull will be hoping for a clean bill of health above all else. They lost prop Matty Laidlaw (head) and young winger Joe Ward (knee) against the Giants last week with the main desire from pre-season games to get through them injury free.
Cartwright also spoke of one fix up for his side in terms of reducing the error count, with Hull conceding two tries on the back of errors last week.
“I was happy with the effort,“ the head coach said post-match. “Most of their tries came off some errors that we made, and we need to tidy that up. We need to defend those errors better if we want to compete with the big boys, but effort-wise, we’re really happy.“
Elsewhere, Hull’s transitions from attack and defence were highlighted by Simon Grix ahead of last week’s game and will be important again, as well as finding the right combinations for the middle units and the like, putting training ground moves into practice while getting valuable minutes into the tank.
As above, though, you get through the game unscathed, and it’s pretty much job done. Fingers crossed Hull do that – and then the real season begins.