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Greenwood previews Swinton away

Dewsbury Rams head coach Lee Greenwood has given his thoughts ahead of a huge game this Sunday against the Swinton Lions.

The Rams head into the fixture on the back of three defeats, and haven’t won away since playing Widnes.

Looking back at the defeat against Batley Bulldogs at the Summer Bash, Greenwood was pleased with the player’s efforts.

He said: “I was proud of the lad’s effort at Blackpool, we asked for some improvements from the Good Friday game against Batley and I think we got that. There were some key moments that didn’t quite go our way, some unlucky moments and some bad decisions and the game sort of got away from us in a ten minute patch. We have watched the video back and hopefully we can improve again this week.

“There were a couple of bits too it, I have heard a lot of people talking about the attacking part of our game. At times it didn’t look pretty, but from a defensive point of view we were disappointed with some of the Batley tires as it was just someone running hard near our line and running over someone. I liked the last try from them; it was something a bit different, a bit of an outer sort of line from the second-rower who played some good rugby. Other than that although their play looked pretty they didn’t do too many line breaks and didn’t score off of many either. From a coaches point of view I know where we need to improve and we are working hard on that behind the scenes.

“We are on a bad run of results and some not good performances and we want to get a win, we won at Widnes which feels like a while ago now. It would be nice to get two points on the board again.”

The Rams head to Swinton looking for a win and Greenwood is expecting a tough challenge from the Lions; he also knows that they can attack well too.

He commented: “Everyone talks about budgets but if you look at Swinton’s squad it is full of young lads, or dual-reg players from Wigan or past academy lads that have been at Swinton a few years. This Championship league is brutal, it is full of men, aggressive teams that will get into you, and if you aren’t up to the physical side of the game as we have found out then you won’t win. There is a lot of that in this league; it is a tough old competition which you face week to week. They are a good attacking team are Swinton who practice their attacking shape. They have done that for a few years now going back to when John Duffy was there and now they have carried it on under Stuart Littler. If we give them that field position that we have given other teams recently they will score points, and they are scoring points against everyone.

“Obviously the start against Batley wasn’t great; we made a mistake early on which meant they had three attacking sets on us before we got anywhere near. This is a simple game really and if you give the opposition the ball near your line eventually they will score. We need to combat Swinton’s attacking threat for those times where it does get near our line, but also focus on keeping them away from attacking our line as much as we can.

 

“Whenever you play teams in and around you, you always end up calling them four pointers as it’s the old cliché. It is a bit like that, if the worst came to the worst and we didn’t win on Sunday then I am more than confident we can beat anyone in this league. We have already shown that with performances we have made away, so for whatever reason if we do lose on Sunday then I will be looking to the next game and that won’t stop.

“It is a massive game and I am sure Swinton are targeting it as a huge game and must win in their season. We can only focus on our performance and how we think we can trouble them and then put it in to place. I know we have lost some games but there were some good things at the weekend. and just by taking a different option it would have had a different outcome in that game, and the league table would be looking a bit different too.

“It is my job as a coach to look at the positives, supporters can look at whatever they want to look at, they spend their money home and away to watch us and they can criticize me, the coaches, the players, the officials whatever they want. I do that when I watch football, it’s just human nature, and they can look at whatever they want to. That is what makes the sport so good; they might think a certain player has played well, where as I think they may have not played so well.”

Finally Greenwood gave us an update on injury news and how bad Callum Field’s injury was after the Summer Bash at Blackpool.

Greenwood stated: “Callum is in a bad way, he broke his ankle so that is not good, he had an op straight away on Monday, it didn’t look good when he did it and it didn’t look good after the game. He is now at home recovering, but when the swelling has gone down we will assess it, so he’s going to be out a while. I dare say it we might not see him again until the end of the season. He’s come in and done ok, he’s done what young lads do where they come in and make mistakes and learn from it and get better as they go along.

“There were no other injury concerns coming out of Sunday, we have a couple of people nearing full fitness really. Paul Sykes is back in full training, Cam Leeming is nearly back in full training so he won’t be too long now, and Martyn Reilly has now had a few Wakefield reserve games under his belt. So there are a few people coming back into contention which helps us a bit bodies wise.”