James Batchelor says there’s no “big crisis meetings” at Hull KR but the long-time Super League leaders have fallen short of their usual high standards. The vice-captain spoke after Saturday’s 28-10 loss at Leigh Leopards, the first time the Robins have suffered back-to-back league defeats in 16 months.
Admittedly, it was still only their third reverse of the campaign but having fallen to Leeds Rhinos and now Leigh, it’s easy to see why some people may think Willie Peters’ side are having a wobble. They have a chance to bounce back at struggling Catalans Dragons in Perpignan next Saturday but Batchelor insisted: “There was a chance to bounce back today – and we didn’t take it.
“We’re not having big crisis meetings or anything but we know there’s a lot to work on and in the last two weeks we’ve been short of our standards, especially today. I thought we were way short of some of the standard and it’s just about getting back to them, getting back to us.
“We’ve got to go all in for next week. Then we’ve got a week off that we can take a breath and recharge ourselves to go again for the back end of the year.”
That will be their first break of the season having gone all the way to Wembley and won the Challenge Cup. Batchelor, returning to the side after missing two games with a throat issue, switched to the centre when Peta Hiku moved inside in the first half following scrum-half Danny Richardson’s unfortunate ankle injury.
But he was given a torrid time by Leigh’s giant Tonga star Tesi Niu who broke clear past him on the outside to set up a try for Lachlan Lam and caused all sorts of carnage with his thunderous carries. Batchelor, 26, said: “He’s a great player. We spoke about him all week. He’s a big dangerman, their strike man.
“He gets sets going forward, and ultimately I didn’t do my job on him in that second half. I was pretty poor against him, and he’s done a good job on me. I just spoke in the changing room and said it wasn’t good enough from me, really.”
But Batchelor certainly wasn’t alone in having an off-day as Rovers wilted in searing heat. He said: “Yeah, it was a tough game, but I think all games against Leigh are and we made it a bit tough for ourselves as well.
“The heat obviously factored both teams, so it’s no excuse.”
Meanwhile, Batchelor, called up to the England squad recently, has opened up on the unusual injury he suffered at Castleford. He said: “Basically, I lost my voice straight away.
“I fractured something in my voice box and it was a lot of bruising and pushing on that. My voice has pretty much come back. It’s not very loud and I can’t really shout but it’s pretty much there.
“I didn’t really think about it at the time. I just thought I got a whack and it just bruised a little bit. I thought it would come back. I probably wasn’t as worried as I should have been at first, but it’s all right now.
“We sort of knew I’d definitely be back for next week [Catalans], and I wanted to try and push it to this week.
“We were going to try and obviously we managed it.”