Hull FC will head out to Perpignan on Friday before taking on Catalans Dragons on Saturday 31 May. The Black and Whites will take on the same travel plan as opted for in February, spending the night in the south of France before heading back to England after the game.
That preparation paid off for the league opener, with Hull running out 24-4 winners at the Stade Gilbert Brutus. They’ll now look for history repeat next week, but know they face a stern test to back up Thursday’s win, with John Cartwright expecting a fired-up Catalans side.
The French club parted ways with Hull-born head coach Steve McNamara earlier this week, with Joel Tomkins now in interim charge.
Explaining the week ahead, Cartwright told Hull Live: “We’re back in on Monday – we’ve had recovery on Friday, and then we’ve got the weekend off. We’re in on Monday and Tuesday, off Wednesday, and we’ll train Thursday and travel Friday. We’ve got three really good days to get ready for them.
“It’s always hard historically – when a team changes coaches, generally, there’s a bit of a spike, but we can sit back and have a look. We’ll come back in fresh on Monday, but it’s exciting. We’re going to have a lot of fans over there, I believe – we’re looking forward to it.”
Heading towards the halfway stage of the season, Cartwright knows the importance of the Catalans game, with the fixture coming as an identified three-week block of fixtures at the midway point of the season.
A victory should be enough to guarantee that Hull, who weren’t expected to challenge for the finals this yea, sit in a play-off spot ahead of the halfway stage against Castleford Tigers in June, with the head coach set to get a measure of where his side are.
“There’s a lot of character in the team,” Cartwright added. “Our form hasn’t been where we’d like it to be over the last five to six weeks, but after the Huddersfield game, we had a bit of a reality check.
“There’s been a lot of hard work – they prepared really well for these last two games. We spoke about this three-week block with Catalans being the third game before the week off.
“We go there, and we’ll give it our best, and then we get a week off. We’re pretty much halfway through the season then, so we’ll get a bit of an idea of where we’re sitting.”