Why Last has turned to Griffin to fill void left by injured Shaul

HULL FC coach Andy Last has revealed he will look to Josh Griffin to fill the hole left by Jamie Shaul at full-back.

Shaul ruptured his ACL in FC’S win over Castleford and he is set to go under the knife in the coming weeks, meaning he will miss the rest of this season and a chunk of next year, too.

Jake Connor stepped into the fullback role in Shaul’s absence earlier this month, but Last is keen for the Great Britain international to continue building his relationship with Marc Sneyd in the halves.

As such, Last will turn to Josh Griffin tonight to play full-back against Hull KR.

“I’m going to look to keep Jake in the half-back position with Sneydy, so we’ll be looking to probably put Griffin in that full-back spot,” Last said.

“He’s done that exceptionally well for us, he’s a strong ball carrier and it keeps the momentum which Marc and Jake are building as a half-back pairing.

“I think that’s important, they navigate the ship so to speak and the combination they’re building as a pair is something we can get excited about. There’s been some real positive steps taken by them both.”

With Josh Jones and Jordan Lane coming into the squad this week, the interim head coach admits he has been forced to make some hard calls in the pack too.

“There’s some tough decisions to make,” he added. “The quality that we’ve got in the back-row in terms of

Andre Savelio, Manu Ma’u, Jordan Lane and Josh Jones, and you could even throw Josh Griffin in that scenario, are all equally talented.

“Laney was arguably our best player for five or six weeks and he really made that back-row spot his own but he’s missed three games because of Covid and Andre and Manu have played exceptionally well.

“It will be tough to change the dynamic of the back-row too much when you consider how well both Andre and Manu played.”