Calland will start rebuild at Hornets

WITH relegation all but confirmed following Sunday’s defeat against Dewsbury Rams, Rochdale Hornets coach Matt Calland is starting to plan for the future.

And the club’s coach reckons a complete overhaul is exactly what’s needed at the club.

Hornets have struggled with life in the Championship this season with Calland coming in to replace Carl Forster early in May.

However, he has been unable to turn around the club’s poor results in the division and the step down a level will offer him the opportunity to start afresh.

“It’s going to be a total rebuild and that doesn’t happen overnight,” he said. “We have to look to the future, to next season, and bringing in the right sort of lads, players who want to play for the club and move forward with that.

“We have drawn up a list of players I’d like to bring in, obviously we’ve not round to signing any as yet because we didn’t know what was happening. But we can start to look at that now.”

Hornets are at home once again this weekend as they entertain Batley Bulldogs. It’s a game Calland believes his side are capable of winning – but only if they see the match through.

“We’ll approach the Batley game the same as any other, looking to win it,” he said. “They had a bad result on Sunday (losing 18-2 to Sheffield Eagles in the semi-final of the 1895 Cup) looking to get to Wembley, but it’s a game that we can win if we play to our potential and we play for 80 minutes, which we haven’t done since I came to the club, we’ve always fallen away in the second half.”

Last weekend was a familiar tale of Hornets falling away after the break. Calland’s men competed in the first and, while he was not impressed with some aspects of their play in the opening 40 minutes, he was left bitterly disappointed by the virtual no-show in the second half.

“I thought we played poorly in the first half,” he said. “Even though we were in the game, the ball control was low, there were too many errors in yardage and we are saying the same things every week. I don’t think Dewsbury played particularly well at all, I think their coach will be fuming with them.

“There was hope at half time, but second half we were awful again. We just fell away and it was so disappointing. We can only play for 40 minutes, we can’t play for 80 and it’s been the story of the season so far.”

Hornets had four tries pulled back and Calland said it was representative of their poor fortune at the minute.

“That’s what happens when your luck’s down, we’ve had six tries disallowed in the last three games and when I looked at the first try against Dewsbury, our lad was onside. So we’re not getting any luck on top of all the errors and penalties we are giving away.”