Hull’s Hodgson: We’re expecting the best version of Warrington
Hull FC head coach Brett Hodgson refused to play down Warrington Wolves’ threats ahead of his side’s Super League fixture tonight.
The Black and Whites head into the contest on the back of two defeats, with the Wire enduring their own run of poor form, losing their last five Super League games.
In Hodgson’s view, that counts for nothing, though, and he is all too aware of the threats they possess.
“We’re expecting the best version of Warrington - the version that played against St Helens,” Hodgson told the Mail.
“They’ve still got quality in that team, I know that they’re probably lacking a little bit of confidence at the minute but they’ve got quality across the board.
“They’ve got speed and they’ve got some international players that played last weekend so we need to expect the best version.
“We also need to have the best performance from ourselves.
“We’ll guard ourselves with some information about what they can do, but ultimately we need to be at our best and that’s the challenge.”
After a week off, the Black and Whites return to action following the international break. Recharging some batteries, the squad was given a few days off to do as they pleased, before coming back to training and preparing for what is a massive game in context of their season.
“Time will tell but I’m hopeful yes,” Hodgson replied when asked if the twoweek break would have done his team some good.
“I think it’s been a long first half of the season and the players have been asked to do a lot of work in that period.
“It was a time to freshen up both mentally and physically but now we’re focused for this week’s game at Warrington. “We’re going to have to be good.” Losing the last two, the Hull FC boss is under no illusions as to what his side, who still sit in fifth spot, have to get right. “We need to be good for 80 minutes,” Hodgson explained.
“We need to work hard for each other, keep fighting, and get back to that little bit of extra resilience that we had on our try line.
“I think we lost that against Catalans when the pressure hit. Ultimately, we’ve got to be confident in what we know works.
“That’s the main thing. Regardless of who is out on the field we need to be at our best and enjoy doing that.
“I don’t feel that we’re that far off. The public perception at the moment is probably that we’re in a big hole but I’m confident in the team that I will select this week and we will go there confident in performing well.”