YORK VALKYRIE coach Leon Pryce is confident his side will come out firing once the second half of the season gets underway against Leeds Rhinos next month.
Since taking over from Lindsay Anfield over the winter, Pryce has seen steady progress and improvement made by his squad and he believes this will only continue when the two-time champions face back-to-back games against their fellow top four clubs for the remainder of the season.
“There has definitely been gradual improvement from us,” said Pryce.
“With a new coaching staff and a new team at the start of the season there was lots of things like skills, defensive systems, attacking structure and standards that we wanted to implement, so that was never going to be smooth sailing from the start.
“We’re not a full-time team that get to train every day of the week, so it was always going to take time.
“But week in, week out we have seen an increase in consistency, in standards, in development and attitudes, so we have definitely seen some encouraging signs.
“But now it’s a case of taking that to a new level. Playing against Wigan, Leeds and Saints every week is going to be tough, but we have quite a few players ready to return to that squad, so we’ll pretty much be at full strength going into this back end of the season.
“We pushed Saints all the way, and we showed in the second half against Wigan that we can definitely compete against them. The game at Leeds was really the only one where I feel we didn’t turn up and give the best account of ourselves.
“I definitely believe in the girls, and they just need to believe in themselves because this is going to be a really challenging period for us, but also an exciting one against the best teams.