Dewsbury Rams head coach Lee Greenwood has said that this weekend’s match against the Swinton Lions will be no mean feat. As the Lions will no doubt put up a strong test against the Rams.
Swinton won their first game of the 2020 season last weekend against Whitehaven, as they were the victors 14-0 on the day. Meanwhile the Rams lost 36-10 at home to the Leigh Centurions on the Friday night.
Head coach Lee Greenwood said about this weekend’s upcoming match: “It’s going to be really hard, Swinton are a decent team, a big side who like to throw the ball about. I would say they ended last season really well and could have been said to be playoff form. They were only really losing to top half teams. Obviously this season they have started off well by beating Whitehaven on their own patch, and I don’t think they have lost at home in their last five games.
“The pitch looks heavy, I have seen video footage of them playing against Warrington in a friendly a couple of weeks back. I saw a bit of footage of the Rugby Union side playing there last week too and so the pitch looks heavy. The forecast doesn’t look good so we are going to have to be ready for all sorts of challenges.
“No one likes playing on a muddy heavy pitch to be honest and no one really trains on those surfaces anymore. Luckily we train on our fantastic facilities here at the stadium, so it will provide us a challenge and it will be something we have to handle.
“Another challenge will be our pitch is narrow and small and theirs is wide and a big Rugby Union pitch with large in goal area’s so that’s something else we will need to be aware of.
“Looking back at the Leigh game now properly there was a 10 minute patch where the game got away from us a little. We went two scores behind so there might have been a bit of resignation that we had lost it. However we just can’t get away from all the positives to come out of the game, we can’t forget the stuff we were doing right to put the scoreline so tight in the game. We have to remember the good things we did and to work on them to get them even better to be able to do those things for longer periods.
“John Duffy who is Leigh’s head coach used to manage Swinton before Stuart Littler took over and Swinton play very much like Leigh, all be it on a smaller budget. However the way they try to play is like Leigh and so it will be interesting to see how we deal with coming up against a similar style of opposition two week’s on the bounce.”
On the injury front, Greenwood said: “There was a few knocks Friday, Andy Gabriel came off with a tight calf and so we’ll have to see how he’s doing in training. Michael Knowles hasn’t trained at all yet as he’s still recovering with an injury to a bone in his hand, it doesn’t look to be a break and it’s just about seeing if we would do anymore damage to it if he trained or played. Other than that everyone else is good so we are picking from strength again.”
