Hull FC

Hull FC coach slams basic errors but claims play-off ‘dream hasn’t gone away’

by
Sam Cook
July 5, 2025

John Cartwright has argued that Hull FC still have dreams of the play-offs despite their worrying run-in and loss to rivals St Helens.

A win for the Black and Whites would have seen them move within one point of Saints and ensured that Wakefield Trinity, who play Catalans Dragons in the late kick-off on Saturday, can’t catch up with them.

The 13-6 defeat leaves them vulnerable and with a whopping seven of their final ten games at home, where they’ve not won in almost a year, it’s starting to look like Hull FC will miss out on the top six.

John Cartwright was asked about the worrying home form and how it might kill their play-off dreams when appearing post-match on Sky Sports.

To those suggestions, he said: “Look, that dream hasn’t gone away. It’s not something we’ve spoken about openly from the start of the season but within our four walls at training, we all believe that we’re able to compete with anyone on our day, but not with statistics that we’re tossing up over the last month.”

Hull FC ‘effort’ still giving Cartwright hope

One thing that he can take solace in is that it wasn’t for a lack of effort that Hull FC loss but instead sloppy errors with a total of 16 made across the 80 minutes whilst their completion percentage wasn’t impressive either.

Asked for his initial thoughts on errors and not being able to take chances, Cartwright labelled it as “a little bit similar to last week”, when they lost against Warrington Wolves.

He added: “We gave ourselves some chances. We’ve got to be really happy with the scramble and the saving of the tries but at the end of the day, that’s not good enough to beat the good teams.

“There were basic errors, just first tackle from the scrum, dummy-half passes, not getting to our kick. I love the effort of the players, but we’re at a stage of the year where we’ve got to love a bit more than that.”

That lack of consistency has been a dominant theme of late but Cartwright dismissed it as he again pointed to the effort, just calling on his side to sharpen up their execution.

The Australian said: “It is what it is. We’ve still plenty of games to go and I know when we play with that sort of effort and spirit that you do get results but just the tidying up the bits on the end, just not getting to our kick, it’s frustrating.

“If effort’s not there, that’s something that’s really hard to deal with but it’s when the effort’s there and you’re just not executing.

“No-one goes in there to drop the ball so it’s just more of a mental block, I suppose, that we’ve got to address.”