HARVEY BARRON reckons Hull FC will be one of Super League’s most exciting sides next season.
They are gearing up for a second campaign under the leadership of John Cartwright, who helped to engineer a climb from eleventh place in 2024 to seventh.
While they missed out on the play-offs by three points, confidence is high that their upward momentum can be carried forward.
Club Academy product Barron played a significant role last season, recording 15 tries in 24 appearances – second in the Hull scoring stakes only to opposite winger Lewis Martin, who was top scorer in both Super League and the Challenge Cup with a combined 32.
And the 22-year-old believes they can be even more prolific with the addition of halfback Jake Arthur, from Newcastle Knights, and fullback Will Pryce, who was limited to ten matches.
“With the players we’re bringing in and the players we’ve got now, I think we’ll be one of the most exciting teams in the league,” said Barron.
“With the experience, with our youth, with Jake coming over and Prycey hopefully having a full year injury-free, we’ve got an exciting team.
“I’m hoping we kick on from last year, and the play-offs are a minimum we want to achieve.”
Barron made his debut for the club in 2022, making four appearances that season, three the next and then 12 in their annus horribilis of 2024.
After sliding further down the table each season since their last play-off appearance in 2020, Barron says the change under Cartwright was vast.
“From where we’d been the last few years, we started to get pride back in the badge and started enjoying what we were doing on and off the field,” he said.
“Everyone was coming in and enjoying each other’s company, and maybe in the years before it wasn’t like that.
“We were just a lot tougher. We were a lot harder to beat, especially away from home. I think teams took us for granted sometimes and we took advantage of that.
“We made it hard for teams to beat us, whereas in previous years we’d get a couple of tries against us and we’d start to crumble.
“We really prided ourselves on being hard to beat and staying in the game.”