Hull FC boss John Cartwright was than happy with what he saw from his new signings on Sunday afternoon against Huddersfield Giants.
The Black and Whites were beaten 28-16 by Luke Robinson’s West Yorkshire outfit, who named a stronger, more experienced side for the clash at Brantingham Park, the home of Hull Ionians.
Hull’s side was largely made up of youngsters with the exception of a handful of senior faces including new signings Sam Lisone, Arthur Romano, Harvie Hill and Connor Bailey, and testimonial man Brad Fash.
Arthur Romano was arguably the stand out in black and white on the day and he was one of two tryscorers against the Giants, with Elliot Middlemas scoring a try in either half. And, the Frenchman was one of those praised by the Hull head coach.
“He was good,” Cartwright said on Romano. “He was probably one of our best. All we asked him to do was to go out there and compete and I thought he competed really hard.”
“It was a good opportunity. You just cross your fingers that you get through unscathed and those boys did. That’s all you can really hope for coming out of the trials; to come through injury free and get as ready as you possibly can for round one.”
On the Hull FC performance itself, he added: “I was really happy. I thought we competed really hard and we got some game time into some new guys who have come to the club. I thought the young halves, Callum and Lloyd Kemp did a really good job. We did a lot of chopping and changing around and I’m really happy for the academy boys and the reserves boys who finished the game. We had eight to ten of them out there towards the end of the game and I thought they did a really good job.
“I was just happy with the effort. Most of their tries came off some errors that we made, so 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.”
The clash didn’t come without its injury concerns though with a couple of Hull’s younger faces picking up issues. Matty Laidlaw took a clean shoulder to the head in the opening minutes and he had to be helped from the field. That was before Joe Ward picked up a knee injury.
“Matty failed his HIA. We’ll do all the checks on him,” Cartwright added.
“Young Wardy has rolled over on his knee. We’re not sure on the extent of it – we’ll have to get some scans on it.”
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