Hull KR boss Willie Peters is confident of being able to welcome three players back into contention for their Super League play-off semi-final in a fortnight’s time.
The Rovers booked their spot in the final four on Friday night as they saw off Leeds Rhinos 26-16 at Craven Park in their final game of the regular season. They did it without three of their key men too, with Niall Evalds, Kelepi Tanginoa and Oliver Gildart all missing from the line-up.
The absences of Evalds and Tanginoa through respective head and hamstring issues, were already well documented with the pair left out of Peters’ 21-man squad. However, Gildart was another to drop out in the build-up to the clash with the centre suffering with rib pain.
Of course, KR will now have two weeks to prepare for their next game, which will be against the highest ranked winner to emerge from next week’s elimination round. However, Peters is hopeful that the break will give all three men the time they need to recover.
“He probably could have played,” Peters said on Gildart. “I wanted to go with a team that was fit, that’s why we went with Tom. He could have played but at this stage of the season he is feeling uncomfortable with his ribs. We chose to go with players that we believed would do the job and were fit.”
Asked if he thought they would feature in the semi-finals, he said: “You’d like to think so, yeah. Niall will be, he’ll be fine. Kelepi will be and I’ll wait and see how Ollie is as well. We’ll wait and see, I’ll know more this week.”
Of course, Peters will be hoping to have the suspended Elliot Minchella back available for their next outing, too. The Hull KR back-rower served the first of a two game ban on Friday night, but with an appeal hearing due next week, there’s a chance he could be cleared to play.
“I won’t go into too much around that, it’s with the people above me but we believe we have a case and that’s why we’re putting it forward,” Peters said. “We’ll see how it goes.”
