Sean Long not happy despite win over Bradford

Despite defeating one of their main promotion rivals last night to keep up their impressive unbeaten start to the season, Featherstone Rovers boss Sean Long was not happy with his side.

He certainly highlighted the last of respect they had for the ball though he did praise his side’s character:

“I thought we had no respect for the ball, we lacked a lot of composure with the ball, we tried to score on every set and every tackle but on the flip side our defence was very resilient. The lads dug deep but I think we dodged a bullet there if I’m being honest, we were way off where I wanted us to be,” Long said on ViaPlay.

“The last play of the game against Newcastle we shifted it off the kick-off and they turned up today thinking it was going to be that type of game. We didn’t earn the right to play, I think we just thought we’d turn up and play but it showed some good character to defend. Obviously though I’m disappointed with the attack.

“We just need to rein it in, when it’s not going our way we just need to rein it in and go back to run hard, bury your nose, kick long, chase hard and go set for set and try turn it around.

“It is game management but it wasn’t the half-backs that were throwing the ball on the floor. I think it’s a great learning day for us.

He also said that his team weren’t happy with themselves either: “The boys are not happy in there, I’m not happy. But yeah we’re learning each week, we know now that our defence is pretty decent but we could have made it a lot easier for ourselves.”

He also hinted that his halftime team talk was a bit of a harsh one: “You didn’t want to hear the half-time speech. They know what they did wrong, they’ve come off the field and they know that they weren’t at the races today with the ball. It’s not going to be a hard week, it’ll be back to normal and working hard for each other.