‘My heart broke’ – Hull FC boss gives John Asiata update after triple injury blow in loss to Hull KR

Hull FC head coach John Cartwright has revealed the injury cost of Good Friday’s Super League derby loss to Hull KR.

Despite a torrid opening 20 minutes, the Black and Whites went into the half 10-6 down but three second-half tries for the hosts Hull KR ensured that Willie Peters’ side won yet another derby with the final score 24-10.

The defeat will have obviously stung, particularly as this was the 250th derby between the sides, but making matters worse was the injury cost of the game with three players leaving the field for Hull FC, including talisman John Asiata.

Joe Batchelor was the first to succumb to injury with the second-rower leaving the field just 20 minutes into his return, having not featured since round two back in February.

“He just felt his hammy tighten up. I don’t think it’s major, he tried to battle through it but you can’t protect that,” John Cartwright revealed when speaking post-match to BBC Radio Humberside.

“When you’ve got to chase someone down to make a tackle, if we could have got him off a little bit earlier, we would but hopefully it hasn’t got any worse, put it that way. We’re hopeful that’s not too bad”

Hull FC star John Asiata suffers ‘pretty bad hamstring injury’

Unfortunately, that wasn’t to be the only hamstring injury that Hull FC sustained with the second one coming for John Asiata and causing great concern as the loose forward had to be helped from the field after going down when stretching to catch the ball.

“Johnny’s copped a pretty bad hamstring injury,” Cartwright admitted before going on to speak about the impact of his injury in the game.

He added: “Losing Johnny, we lost a fair bit of direction. That’s no excuse, so I’m not using that, I’m looking in my head as to how we can get better for the next [game], and we’ve got to come up with a plan there with Johnny copping a bad injury.

“My heart broke when I saw Johnny. We knew it was his hammy when he got up and tried to walk off.

“The amount of work that the guy has put in to get himself back on the field, and then for that to happen, when any player gets injured you don’t want to see it but especially the road he’s had.”

Asiata has been sidelined previously with a hamstring injury with the 32-year-old missing most of the off-season after an injury last August.

He wasn’t the final injury concern either with centre Arthur Romano leaving the game late on, with Cartwright stating: “Arthur looks like he’s rolled his ankle pretty bad as well. There’s no game next week so we’ll just patch them up as best we can, find out what’s wrong with them first and hopefully, fingers crossed, they’re not out too long.”

Half-back Jake Arthur also missed the game through injury with John Cartwright announcing on Sky Sports pre-match: “He’s got a bit of a calf problem on the back of the short turnaround. It was just too quick to get him back on the field. Look, it’s not long-term, but whether he’s available for St Helens, we’ll have to wait and see.”

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