Sheffield Eagles: Aston welcomes new found ruthlessness

After going into the break behind, the Eagles were staring down the barrel of a fourth straight defeat, but a terrific second-half showing inspired by the returning Cory Aston, ensured the Eagles moved four points clear of the drop zone.

With Aston back on a new one month loan deal from Castleford, plus the addition of ex-St Helens back-rower Mike Weldon, the Eagles have numbers again with the squad further boosted by the successful return from injury of Irish international centre Josh Toole.

Eagles chief Aston spoke of his pride in his side’s welcome return to winning ways, with the 50-year-old seeing examples of a ruthless streak that he has been craving for in recent,weeks.

“You just have to be ruthless and I thought that at the start of the second half we were ruthless,” Aston explained.

“I am so proud of the boys today because we have been under the pump. We talked about being clinical in the second half with completion, we did that and we got the result.”

After the defeat to London prior to last weekend’s trip to Blackpool, Aston spoke of witnessing signs of progress after two disappointing showings to start the month.

At the half-way stage it looked as though the Eagles were heading for another defeat but a clinical spell which saw Aston’s side run in six second-half tries saw them over the line, despite a late flourish from the Raiders.

“We built on last week where we had a good 60 minutes against London, and against Barrow I thought that we probably had 60 minutes again,” Aston continued.

“We have a little disrespect in us still and we fetched them back into the game. We got the result and that’s the most important thing and now we have a week off, we can take a bit of a breath of fresh air and then we have got Swinton.”

Meanwhile, Eagles duo Kieran Moran and Blake Broadbent both picked up some game time in League One as part of the dual-registration agreement with Hemel Stags.

Both were included in the side that we heavily beaten on home soil by league leaders Bradford Bulls.