Man of Steel’s faith in attack
A WEEK on from making his representative debut against Tonga, Salford half-back Jackson Hastings will again start in the halves when Great Britain take on New Zealand this weekend.
The decision to call up the Australian-born trio of Lachlan Coote, Blake Austin and Hastings split opinion across the sport and the 2019 Steve Prescott Man of Steel award winner will be the only one of the three to feature at Eden Park on Saturday.
Hastings qualifies because his grandmother was born in Plymouth and the 23-year-old is delighted to have retained his spot, despite the presence of several other playmakers in Wayne Bennett’s touring party.
“Everyone on the tour wants to play the games and for me, I’m fortunate to get a second bite of the cherry and get another game with the boys,” he said. “It was a massive honour and thrill the other night.
“Being named in the team is one thing, but getting through the week, doing the captain’s run and warm up, then facing the traditional war cry from the Tongan boys and signing the anthem, then playing the game – it all culminated in a pretty special night for myself.”
The Lions fell to a 14-6 defeat against a powerful Tonga side, but Hastings insists the GB attack wasn’t far off clicking into gear.
“Obviously, not getting the result is disappointing, but we’ve touched on what we need to work on,” he explained. “It’s pretty simple really, they scored two very good tries, but at the same time, they were off the cuff and they weren’t very structured. There were a lot of off-loads, grubbers and things like that.
“We just didn’t get the ball to the right spot when we needed to. We looked at it back and it actually wasn’t as bad as everyone first thought – we had the shape and all that, the ball just didn’t go where we needed it to go.
“It probably didn’t look great from afar, but when we broke it down on video and actually looked at where we were on the field and the positions we got into, it was pretty good to be fair.” Hastings was partnered in the halves by Gareth Widdop and believes the understanding between the two playmakers and hooker Josh Hodgson will be even stronger in their second game together.
“It’s up to me and Gaz to really demand that ball when we want it,” said Hastings. “When we actually got the ball in our hands and were running at the line, we were actually creating opportunities me and Gaz, but there probably wasn’t enough times that we did that and that’s something we’ve worked on at training this week and something we’ll take into the game this weekend.”
HASTINGS BELIEVES GB ATTACK NOT FAR OFF CLICKING DESPITE DEFEAT TO TONGA