Hull FC play their final home game this Saturday evening.
Hull FC’s Aidan Sezer kicks a conversion. (Image: SW PIX)
Andy Last was already banging the Hull FC attitude drum before his side even left Perpignan on Saturday night.
The Black and Whites produced a superb comeback win to defeat Catalans Dragons 27-26 at the Stade Gilbert Brutus, with attention turned to Saturday’s final home game against Warrington Wolves at the MKM Stadium.
Determined to put back to back performances together after digging deep in the South of France, Last’s messaging has already been about attitude, and ensuring that his Hull players, who have been consistently inconsistent this year, attack the week and then gameday in the right way.
“I’ll be talking about attitude and the pressures of privilege, playing in front of a big crowd who will all be expecting a strong performance,” Last said after the game. “We showed the true Hull FC tonight, and now we want to put out our best performance in our last home game against a very good team in Warrington.
“Hopefully, they will be a little bit busted and tried after playing three games in ten days and we can benefit from that, but we’ve got to deliver it on game day. There was some moments here and we executed and nailed those moments, and now there’s going to be some moments next week against Warrington that we will need to nail.
“The big thing for us is that we just need to build the game. I thought we built the game for large periods tonight and that allowed us to perform and get the result.”
Hull did just that in Perpignan. They started well and were much cleaner and crisper throughout with James Bell pulling the strings and Jake Arthur and Aidan Sezer playing out the back to score some eye-catching tries.
It was night and day from the Castleford defeat the week before with Hull out of sorts and resembling a team that never played together, making errors and giving away penalties and therefore struggling to get on top of their opposition.
Asked if the lack of consistency in shape and performance is attitude- or skill-related, Last added: “It’s probably a bit of both, but also if you get the basics of the game wrong, you take away energy, and when you take away energy and you’re asking Herman Ese’ese to run a genuine lead line, or Sam Lisone, who has made unnecessary tackles after errors, it has a knock-on effect.
“The importance of getting the basics of the game right, completion rates, and where you turn the ball over, is massive. It impacts other areas of your performance. We found some energy here because we did the right thing on a more consistent basis than we did last week.”