FIGHTING TALK

Harsh words with Ellis & Co after thrashing by Vikings turned Hull’s season around and put them on brink of a treble

WHEN Gareth Ellis and fellow senior players stood in front of the Hull FC squad after their 46-6 defeat at Widnes in March, they had no idea they were shaping the club’s season.

The players asked the entire backroom staff, including coach Lee Radford, to leave the room to dissect exactly what had gone wrong for a side tipped to challenge for honours. Fast forward five months, and the Black and Whites stand on the edge of a potential treble, topping Super League and preparing for tomorrow’s Challenge Cup final with Warrington Wolves. It seems a long way from that cold spring night when Hull looked anything but silverware contenders. Ellis explained: “We didn’t just want to brush it aside, we wanted to put our foot on why we had delivered such a poor performance. “It seems to have made a difference, looking back on it – we certainly kicked on from that game. It was a few of the senior, older players – Danny Houghton (above, right) was in on it. “We just said let’s get the players together and take responsibility for our performance and they did that and that is credit to them. We knew we had an opportunity to do something good this year. “How good it can be, time will tell. We just wanted to nip it in the bud there and then.” Radford caused a stir in the immediate aftermath of the incident by saying his players had “locked him out” of the dressing room. But at the time he had no issue at all with them taking responsibility for their performance without the backroom staff present. He said: “I can understand why they asked them to get out. “They wanted a bit of privacy and I wasn’t going to be there anyway – I was doing the press interviews. “The last thing you want as a player is a protein shake when you’re telling you’re team-mate he’s s***. “Or your kit-man ragging your shirt off another bloke and you’re trying to tell him he’s terrible. “I thought the seniors were going to sort it out. “The leadership group we’ve got is great and gets together once a week anyway. And if there are any issues it filters through back and forth and that’s a good working relationship.” Radford yesterday left utility player Jordan Abdull out of his 19-man squad, while Warrington boss Tony Smith named an unchanged selection.