Hull KR boss Willie Peters surprised some against Leeds Rhinos when he named Corey Hall at second-row.
However, he says that new star signing Kelepi Tanginoa will be drafted in for Round One with the back-rower on track.
Peters said: “Oh look Kelepi Tanginoa is on track for round one. Kelepi will be our back-rower, so I’ll give you that. We’ve signed Kelepi for a reason and he was training really well.
“As I said, it was a little minor setback, but he’s on track to play round one. And then Corey Hall, obviously we’ve got to look at the make-up of the bench, but Corey, it’s important that I make the point that Corey’s best rugby league is going to be in two years’ time, he’s 21 now.
“He’s going to be, well I believe, he can be a future England player. So we need to develop him and he needs to play. While we play him in the back row, we don’t have a great deal of depth there, but he actually wants to be closer to the action and we know he can play centre. So as I say, the more that Corey plays the better he’s going to be. He’s best rugby is ahead of him, that’s for sure.”
Hull KR boss looks ahead to Round One
Hull KR v Hull FC Picture by Ed Sykes/SWpix.com – 09/07/2023 – Rugby League – Betfred Super League Round 18 – Hull KR v Hull FC – Sewell Group Craven Park, Hull, England – Hull KR head coach Willie Peters
Peters also gave the forecast of how things will ban out going into the derby against Hull FC:
“So the players will get two days off, well they do recovery tomorrow and then they get a day off after that and then we’ll come in Wednesday, they get another couple of days off and then we build so we’ll come back in next Sunday. So everything’s about round one, and to be honest, everything that we’ve been building for has been about round one.
“So that’s why today’s result doesn’t matter in terms of scoreline, but what does matter is where we need to fix, as I said before, is making sure that in a game, if we give a penalty away, we give a six again, or we defend the line 15, 20 times, they don’t score. Like, it’s not okay to score off the back of that. That’s what we need to improve on. We need to make sure that we can, you know, as I say, like, handle a little bit more adversity at times and swing momentum back our way.”
