Willie Peters has urged his Hull KR side not to ruin the party tomorrow. Obviously, there’s already been plenty of celebrations for Rovers ever since Saturday’s epic Challenge Cup final win.
There were joyous scenes in Sunday’s parade through the city, ending with the trophy being brought out on the City Hall balcony in front of thousands of fans. And the Cup has been showcased in plenty of other places around East Hull in the days since.
The club will also parade it around Sewell Group Craven Park after Friday’s game against Catalans Dragons – although that could fall flat if the Super League leaders lose.
As they bid to secure a first-ever League Leaders’ Shield, Rovers can ill-afford to slip up with Wigan hard on their heels. On the challenge of resetting after all the emotions of recent days and getting back to the bread and butter of their Super League quest, Peters admitted: “It comes back to an individual thing.
“We’ve spoken about it. Individually you need to get yourself right – staff, players, everyone involved – because we’ve just gone through something really special. And Friday night’s game is going to be the biggest crowd of the year so we’ve got an opportunity to be able to continue the celebration, walking around with the trophy afterwards.
“If we lose that game and don’t perform, it’s going to be pretty sombre for us and the fans. So we want the fans to celebrate. We’ve had our time to do that. We want the fans to celebrate and enjoy it now. It’s back to business for us. So, we need to go and put in a performance that we’re proud of.”
Peters, who hopes to have more on Tyrone May’s future soon, added: “Last week wasn’t our best performance, we know that. So we’re looking for a better performance this week.
“And then enjoy what goes with that. But as I said, if we don’t perform well, you don’t go win that game, then it will soon be a pretty sombre mood, which we don’t want for our fans.”
Catalans are in shocking form having been nilled in each of their last three games. The only other side to suffer that fate in Super League history was Wakefield at the start of their relegation year of 2023.
But it is hard to imagine their abysmal run continuing and ex-KR captain Joel Tomkins is desperate to get a first win in his third game in charge after taking over following Steve McNamara’s exit.
They have big guns Sam Tomkins, Tevita Pangai Jr and Tariq Sims back in their squad along with Julian Bousquet and Bayley Sironen. And Peters, who has a series of injury issues to contend with, knows his side can’t repeat what they did against Warrington at Wembley before Tom Davies’ 77th minute try got them out of jail.
He recalled: “We had a lot of errors, 11 errors which is far too many errors in a big game like that. You can’t give opposition teams like Warrington and teams like that such field position.
“Marc Sneyd was exceptional; the way he kicked put us in vulnerable positions. But we put a lot of pressure on ourselves as well so again it’s not playing the occasion. Some of us might have done that.”