A question of confidence for Rovers, says Crooks
KR STAR SAYS ROBINS HAVE TO PLAY WITHOUT FEAR
Ben Crooks believes Hull KR are suffering from a confidence issue and need to go back to playing without fear. Rovers have won admirers this year but ultimately have only two Super League victories to show for their efforts.
Since producing their most complete performance of the season to beat Wigan and backing that up the following week against St Helens, KR have suffered three disappointing defeats.
Slow starts are becoming a theme and Crooks has put it down to a lack of belief.
“The key thing is going out there confident about what you’re going to do,” he said.
“We did a bit of research into teams starting fast and starting slow and winning halves and losing halves and I made a joke saying if we got a point for winning a half we’d be halfway up the table now.
“I think it’s a confidence issue. Instead of dipping our toe in and seeing how it goes we’ve got to get that confidence back that we are a skilful team.
“We need to play the way we want to play straight from the off. We’ve proved we can cause teams trouble but we end up doing it in the second half when we’re chasing the game.
“It’s having the mentality of doing it early on and getting out in front rather than having to chase.”
Crooks himself is not short on confidence after his switch to fullback in last week’s clash with Huddersfield Giants.
It was his first time in the role since joining the club in 2018 and the 27-year-old has taken a lot from the show of trust.
“It was a good experience and I’ll take confidence from the fact that Tony (Smith) has got that confidence in me to do that role,” he said.
“It’s a very specific job and a very important role with a lot of pressure on it.
“For Tony to think I’m capable of stepping up to that standard - especially when I’ve never really played there - I take great confidence from that.
“I’ll work on the little things that I didn’t do so well last week and if the weather stays good over there, it will hopefully allow us to attack the way we want and me to attack the way I want as well.”
After losing their way in the driving rain in Huddersfield last week, the Robins should be greeted by warm and dry weather when they touch down in Perpignan.
As well as having ideal conditions for their brand of rugby, Smith’s side will experience a crowd for the first time in seven months against Catalans Dragons.
“Not really because we won’t be able to understand a word they’re saying,” Crooks joked when asked if playing in front of 5,000 spectators would be a shock to the system.
“It’ll be good to have that atmosphere that we’ve been missing. “But as a player as soon as the ball kicks off it’s just white noise and you don’t really notice it. We’ll probably notice it a little bit more in the little breaks.
“If they get a bit of momentum it’ll probably get a little bit louder, but if we do what we want to do and get on top early on it’ll probably be like we’re not playing in front of a crowd anyway.”