Brown reiterates ‘future is still in our hands’ ahead of Featherstone clash

The end of the season is fast approaching with only three matches remaining as Sheffield are hoping to return to winning ways after losing their last five matches.

However, coach Simon Brown insists that the Eagles' push for the playoffs isn’t over yet as he said: “we’re going to need three good performances and as I say the future is still in our hands.”

“We just need to execute a little bit better and find some energy and just test things a little bit more with the ball which we’re hoping to do this week.”

Sheffield head to the Millennium Stadium in a bid to complete the league double over Featherstone after they claimed a tight 18-16 victory in the return fixture at the Olympic League Stadium in June.

However, both teams head into this match on the back of a loss after Featherstone fell to a 28-8 defeat to Swinton Lions whilst Sheffield lost 12-30 to Bradford Bulls.

Brown was dissapointed with last weeks' loss to the Bulls with the team working on improving their performance during the week as he said: “[we] revived it last night and it’s just disappointing really for the result but the execution wasn’t great which we’ve been trying to fix over the last few weeks.”

“[We need to] get confidence back in our attack but it’ll come and I thought defensively we we’re alright even thought it sounds a bit daft considering 30 points but we weren’t too far off.”

The Eagles coaching staff have made multiple changes to the 21-man squad ahead of Sunday with Jack Hansen, Connor Bower and Anthony Thackeray all returning to contention.

However Izaac Farrell, Alex Foster and Ryan Millar all drop out of this weekend’s squad for the Eagles’ penultimate away fixture of the 2024 season.

The squad is shaping up for this weekend's fixture with a number of key players returning as the South Yorkshire side continue their bid for the playoffs as Brown said: “[we’ve] hopefully got a few back I know we had four changes last week through injury so hopefully some of them will be back.”

“We could do with [Hansen or Thackeray] coming back as well to give us a bit of energy but it is what it is and we’ve gone through the year were we’ve had different halfbacks and the last four or five weeks we’ve had that as well.”

The Eagles will face Featherstone Rovers at the Millennium Stadium this Sunday at 3pm in round 24 of the Betfred Championship.