Hull KR face York Knights in the quarter-finals of the Challenge Cup this afternoon
Hull KR coach Willie Peters.(Image: Allan McKenzie/SWpix.com)
Willie Peters admits he hasn’t spent too much time looking back at Hull KR’s round one defeat to York Knights this week, but he’s motivated to ‘turn the tables’.
The Robins host York this afternoon as they bid to book their spot in the final four of the Challenge Cup for the fifth straight year.
Last season’s treble winners are firm favourites to progress and few will be backing against KR to get the job done against Mark Applegarth’s side. However, Rovers were in the exact same position two months ago when they went to the LNER Community Stadium in round one and were humbled.
They were their own worst enemies on that occasion, but ultimately, they were on the wrong end of one of the biggest shocks in living memory as the newly promoted side pipped the champions.
KR certainly won’t be taking York lightly, then, but they’ll be confident of getting the job done.
“We’ll touch on it, but I won’t go into it too much because you get caught up in it, in terms of the emotion,” Peters said. “I think we’ve improved since then, that was our first game and we hadn’t really had a friendly with that team together.
“We hurt ourselves in that game. We were up by 12 points, Mikey (Lewis) hit Liam Harris late, got sent for 10 (minutes) and we didn’t handle that.
“We certainly don’t forget it. We know what happened in round one and need to make sure we turn the tables on Saturday.”
Rovers’ start to the season was challenging to say the least, but they have now won four of their last five in all competitions and they come into the contest on the back of home wins over St Helens and Hull FC.
“It’s helped us get a bit of flow and rhythm to our game,” Peters added. “I keep saying it’s round 10-12 where you start looking where you’re at.
“But you’re one loss away from everyone saying the season has fallen over or they’re inconsistent or whatever, but as long as we can keep performing well, and that’s what we broke it down to a couple of weeks back, getting the performance right.
“A win will get us to the next round but it will show that we’re starting to get a bit of consistency and we’re starting to fulfil how we want to play this year. We’re going to back to what works for us and that’s keeping it simple.
“We still want to play a good brand and entertain but we also want to put ourselves in positions at the back end of the game to be in it.
“At the end of the day in the Challenge Cup you just need a result, I don’t want to contradict here but you don’t want to perform well and get beat in the cup, if you grind out the result and win ugly then that’s OK for this week.”