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“Loads of positives” for London Broncos despite Challenge Cup exit as fatal error highlighted

London Broncos

London Broncos head coach Mike Eccles has argued that there are “loads of positives” to take despite his side’s surprise Challenge Cup exit.

The Broncos boss has also picked out the aspect of the game that cost London the win as they crashed out of the Challenge Cup with a 17-10 loss against League One’s newest side Goole Vikings.

Goole had played their first ever game since joining the professional ranks a fortnight ago when they faced Featherstone Rovers but Saturday’s Challenge Cup clash marked their first ever recognised game.

London coach Mike Eccles has argued that one of the traits that Goole showed against Featherstone is where the Vikings won the game, something that left him and his side incredibly frustrated.

Speaking on the London Broncos YouTube channel, Eccles explained: “I thought they taught us a lesson in how to play the ruck. The ruck was just a mess. We’d planned for the whole week but we were coughing up the ball and getting hands in the ruck.

“We’d planned for it, we’d shown them it from the previous game that Goole played and that’s how it transpired but until you’ve seen it and lived it, you don’t know. The boys are gutted on that side, we felt we fell into a trap with a yellow card and the ruck infringements.”

London Broncos “gutted” but taking plenty of positives after Goole Vikings loss

Despite going 10-0 up after just 20 minutes, Goole managed to eek their way back into the game – in part due to their ruck management but also due to London errors, however, Eccles was full of praise for the League One side.

He said: “In terms of Goole, I thought they were fantastic. I think the difference between the two teams really was their outcomes.

“Ours were incredibly poor, we couldn’t buy a repeat set, we had wrong kick selection or wrong pass selection and they put our edges under a lot of pressure with their kicking game.”

Eccles lamented their cancelled game as a reason for the team’s rustiness, something he foresees them having in Round One of the Championship given that they don’t play again before then, however, he was generally upbeat despite the loss.

He explained: “I’m gutted with the result and the way it transpired but funnily enough I thought that there was a load of positives in that.

“I thought we were really dominant in that first 20 minutes and just got taught a lesson about taking your foot off the gas.”

Looking at those positives, he noted: “In terms of our defensive structure, I thought we were fantastic, and we had a lot of defending to do in terms of what we did to ourselves with the ball. Systematically, we were good but we just did way too much defending.

“I thought some of the combinations we had were fantastic. We had them on toast on our left edge but we just didn’t go there again which was remarkable really.”

The game saw Eccles utilise a number of triallists, all of whom he claimed impressed him, as he gave this assessment: “I thought they were fantastic. There was a lot of nerves in our dressing room but they’ve absolutely given me more to look at in terms of their games individually.”

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