New squad shape pleases KR’S Smith
TONY Smith has declared himself happy with the way his Hull KR squad is shaping up for the 2021 Super League season.
Rovers will have a fresh look again next year after moving on a dozen players, although three did not feature for Smith’s side in 2020.
KR have added quality and size in the shape of Albert Vete, Ryan Hall and Korbin Sims, while young prop Muizz Mustapha will bring aggression and enthusiasm to the pack.
Fellow front-rower George King arrived towards the end of the 2020 campaign and the Robins have promoted two youngsters to the first-team squad in Will Tate and Charlie Cavanaugh.
Rovers are still on the lookout for new recruits but are taking stock after landing their main targets.
Smith currently has a 30-man squad and must decide whether to send any of his fringe players out on loan with reserve grade suspended until 2022 and dual-registration set to be scrapped.
The Robins head coach says he will cross that bridge once the club wrap up their recruitment.
“We need to finalise everything before we even look that way,” Smith told the Mail. “We’ve got a reasonably sized squad again. I know there’s some talk about us letting X amount of players go and all that sort of stuff but we’ve done some promotion from within and brought in a couple of young blokes.
“We’re shaping up pretty well at the moment. We’ll make some decisions on whether people will get game time or will have to go out on loan.
“We’ll have some further thoughts about how to strengthen and best utilise our squad in order to get experience for some of our players as well.
“We’ll explore all those things but we’re quite happy with the way we’re shaping up at the moment.”