DENVER, CONNORADO
Hull star Jake stakes his claim for place on plane for Kiwis showdown
JAKE CONNOR strengthened his claims for a ticket to England’s Kiwi Test in Denver next month as Hull FC continued their derby dominance.
Utility star Connor has become increasingly influential in recent weeks with playmakers Marc Sneyd and Albert Kelly out, and scored one try and created two others.
It helped the Black and Whites record a seventh straight win over their city rivals to keep their top-four push on track, despite an injury list that was added to by Josh Griffin.
Hull FC brought Kirk Yeaman out of retirement and handed debuts to Liam Harris and Cameron Scott, while Rovers were forced to constantly reshuffle their options.
But Connor in particular seems to be thriving in the adversity, although his coach Lee Radford is wary of one side of his game, joking Connor’s wind-up antics were giving his team a bad reputation.
But the Hull coach added: “He’s a good player. He got sin-binned last week just because he’s Jake Connor.
“Could it harm his international prospects? I think he’d certainly get under the Kiwis’ skin. He’s a fantastic utility player – it’s not my decision but he’s talented enough to go to Denver.”
Radford thought Joe Westerman was the best player on the field and insisted that the result was more important than the performance given the absentees.
Radford said: “I’ll continue to take ugly wins from now until we get some blokes back. The pack was one place where we were strong in terms of selection and I thought we marched them up the field whenever we needed to.”
Hull KR led after the opening quarter courtesy of the first of a Kieren Moss hat-trick, but
by half-time they were chasing the game.
Scott Taylor touched down against his former club after a Connor kick bounced off the crossbar, before Jamie Shaul sneaked over from dummy half.
Moss hit back with his second directly from a scrum, but more poor defence from the Robins hurt them at the other end of the field as young halfback Harris pushed off Chris Clarkson to score.
Shaul’s second from a superb Westerman offload made it 24-10 at the break, though to their credit the Robins stirred again after the restart.
Despite having Nick Scruton in the sin-bin for a shoulder charge, they created enough space for Moss to complete his treble, briefly closing the gap to eight points.
But then Connor stepped forward again to decide matters.
First he drifted across the defence before putting Jack Logan over in the corner, before stepping through himself to cross by the posts.
Tommy Lee recorded a late consolation for Rovers, who now sit bottom of Super League.
Coach Tim Sheens said: “There’s not much between us and Salford, in eighth place. It’s fairly close and whenever there’s that ray of hope we’ll cling onto that.
“Our issue is getting some of our better players back on the park.
“In real terms today their were just too strong for us in the middle of the field.”