Hull KR coach Willie Peters is confident the club have settled on the ideal formula to ensure they are in perfect condition for their pursuit of landing the Challenge Cup trophy. Rovers have changed a significant number of things from their last visit to Wembley two years ago when they lost out by the narrowest of margins after a golden point defeat to Leigh Leopards.
The club have changed their base of operations in London to be more central and will this year train on the pitch at Wembley, taking the opportunity to hold their captain’s run on the famous turf. Having travelled to the capital by train and not coach, there’s been a number of changes in how KR are approaching the last two days before the big game.
For Peters, it is about being in more control of what the club can take ownership of, with staying some way outside of London in a luxurious hotel two years ago not as ideal as it seemed.
“After the game last time, when we reflected there wasn’t a great deal that we would have changed,” explained Peters. “One thing was in terms of the hotel. The hotel we stayed at in 2023 was the best I’ve ever stayed at, but it was a bit of a distance away.
“So when you’re in London, I’m from Sydney, the traffic’s very unpredictable. So when we were talking around hotels we said, oh, we may have to give ourselves time to do this or we want to get to the stadium at the time that we normally get to a game. We could be stuck in London traffic.
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“Last time we probably got there a little bit early and we’ve got a certain amount of time that we want arrive at the ground and start our prep and that’s what we’re aiming to do this time, which we can do that by staying at a hotel nearby. Little things in and around that, you know we were in a bus last time for about six hours on the way down to London.
“Again, we can’t predict the traffic so we’re going to look to get different type of transport down there and then we’ll get on a bus to go to the local hotel, but just little things in around that that we feel like we can do.
“It’s just making sure that we can control what we can because there are things that you can’t control. What we can’t, we’ve had slight tweaks and little changes.”
What didn’t change was the send off afforded to Rovers, with hundreds at Craven Park on Thursday morning to see the team off on their journey to Wembley.