Lingard calls for Eagles response after Oldham defeat

The Eagles make the short trip to the FLAIR Stadium this Sunday to face Dewsbury Rams in Round 8 of the Championship, and Craig is hopeful his side can make a strong return to their previous positive form.

Speaking ahead of Sunday’s clash against Dewsbury, Craig offered his insight on where his side’s mentality is at coming off the back of defeat, and what they need to be able to turn it around to stay strong for the rest of their campaign.

“The defeat last week to Oldham has been a really tough one to take following the great start we have made to the season,” said Lingard.

“We’ve identified that we want our home form to be very good this year, and we felt that it was one of those games that just got away from us.

“We ended the first half a little bit sloppy, and I think that spell and at the start of the second half was where the game was won or lost. I think Oldham had around sixteen sets compared to our three at the start of the second half, and that had a massive impact in them turning the game around.

“Last week’s game needs to be viewed as a learning curve; there’s maybe been a couple of games now so far this year where we have maybe got out of jail with a lack of either game management or lack of being patient at times. We don’t want to stop the boys playing rugby, but we need to just make sure we understand how to get ourselves into a contest better and win them games.

“Massive credit to the boys coming back into the game from 30-20 down, they dealt well with that relentless pressure in defence from Oldham attacking our line with those sixteen sets, they did show a lot of character to be able to originally back into that game. It was nice as well to score plenty of points, but we need to make sure that we’re putting ourselves in a better position to win games.”

Last Sunday’s game saw both Lennie Ellis and Will Oakes making their debut starts for the club, and Craig made a point to comment on their impact on last Sunday’s fixture.

“I thought they both did really well last weekend coming into the side,” he added.

“Lennie (Ellis) came on at full back originally after we had lost Matty Marsh, and we had to think about our forward rotation and had to move Jack Bussey into the second row as soon as George Griffin came on, before Lennie was able to move back into his natural position at half back.

Will (Oakes) is devastating when he has ball in hand, you could just see that with the build-up to set up Billy Walkley’s try with his carry. He’s strong and difficult to put down, hopefully once he can get playing week-in-week-out, then we’ll really start to see his fitness go up and work rate go up too.”

Losing both Matty Marsh and Blake Broadbent in last weekend’s loss may provide a challenge for the Eagles, with two key positions needing filling ahead of this Sunday’s fixture.

“We’re currently assessing several players ahead of this weekend. As of Tuesday, we had seven players who might not have played this weekend, so I reckon that we’re going to be doing it tough this weekend.

“At this moment in time, we reckon Ryan (Millar) could be another couple of weeks away, Kieran Gill could be the same, and we need to see where we are this week with both Fozzy (Alex Foster) and Peachy (Lewis Peachey).

“Numbers wise, it feels like it’s a bit of backs to the wall a bit for this week, and hopefully we can get some news before the weekend where some of these players might be available for Sunday.”

Sunday’s opponents Dewsbury head into this weekend's clash in good form. Last Sunday saw them head to Cumbria and claim their fourth win of the season against Workington Town. They currently sit level on points with the Eagles in the Betfred Championship league table, despite playing one more game so far.

The Eagles coach knows it’s not going to be another easy game, and he hopes his side understands the errors made last weekend and what will need to be done to ensure they can reclaim their former positive form.

“Dewsbury’s start to the season has been very good, they got three victories in their first three games, and I guess with the fixture format, they will have played the teams that finished in and around them last season in League 1.

“I think for us, we need to ensure that the intensity that we play with is really high. They’ve got the confidence at the minute, especially after that good win at Workington last week, so they’ll be flying on confidence, so we need to make sure we turn up and play with the intensity of a top four Championship side.

“Going over to Dewsbury’s field is going to be on a much narrower and smaller pitch, so we’ll need to get our heads around that this week and adapt, making sure we adjust to whatever they throw at us too.

“The message this week to the boys is simply that we knew we weren’t going to go the full season unbeaten, it was disappointing last week because it felt like a game in which we lost and Oldham didn’t necessarily win. I thought Oldham were excellent especially in the second half, but we went into that game leading at the break and then found ourselves behind after twenty minutes in the second half.

“It wasn’t a game that we managed very well, it was probably our first set back this year and the first time this year, bar Warrington, where we’re probably been on the end of a defeat, so it’s about how we react and how we respond.

“We faced a lot of adversity last week where we lost Marshy (Matty Marsh) early, we lost Blake (Broadbent) in the second half, and he couldn’t return to the field, which meant we had to play lots of people out of position, and people were doing lots of minutes.

“With the sin-bin to Martyn Reilly and then the consecutive sets which we had to defend early in the second half too, there was a lot of adversity which we faced last weekend. I’m happy with the resilience, but we can make things so much better and easier for ourselves by how we adapt this weekend. We need to come back with a response and get back onto that winning ladder this Sunday.”