‘Disappointed’ Sheffield look to regain form as they travel to Barrow Raiders.
Sheffield Eagles will travel to Cumbria to face Barrow Raiders in round 16 of the Betfred Championship.
Neither side picked up a win last week as the Eagles went down 22-34 at home to Swinton Lions whilst Barrow were defeated 22-2 by Batley Bulldogs.
However, this season couldn’t be more different for the two sides as Sheffield find themselves in second place behind only undefeated Wakefield Trinity whilst Barrow are second from bottom in the 14-team league.
On the match-up between the two sides, assistant coach Simon Brown said: “we’re looking forward to it, it’s always a tough trip going up to Barrow it’s a tough place to go.”
“We’re looking forward to bouncing back we were disappointed on Sunday it wasn’t really what we are about and what we want to be about so we’re really excited to get up there and get a bit of payback.”
Head Coach Mark Aston has made three changes to the squad from last weekend’s game as Alex Foster, Mitch Clark and Ryan Millar come back into contention.
The three returnee replace Bayley Liu, Aaron Murphy and Lewis Peachey as the Eagles look to maintain their second-place spot ahead of Toulouse Olympic who are only one point behind.
On the importance of getting the two points to stay in second place, Vila Halafihi said: “oh massively yeah, and I don’t think as a team we’re worried about those people behind us we’ve been in a similar position last year where we were second for the majority of the year”
“I think we’ve learnt from last year, we just concentrate on our game week by week not worrying about Bradford, Toulouse and Widnes those teams that are just below us we know we have to go out there at the weekend […] that’s the most important thing for us.”
Sheffield will look to claim the league double over Barrow, after they defeated the side 54-0 at home earlier in the season, as they face the Raiders at 3 pm on Sunday 21st July at Craven Park.