AMBITIOUS Midlands Hurricanes have opened the door for a second successive season at the main Alexander Stadium – the hub of athletics at the 2022 Commonwealth Games.
And Mark Dunning can rightly point to their unprecedented success in 2024 and a pre-season victory at Championship club Batley, which earned them the nomination as the League Express Team of the Week, as a good measure of where they are heading.
Dunning moved to the now Birmingham-based club towards the end of 2023.
“The result (at the Fox’s Biscuits Stadium) re-affirms that what we have been working on is right and we certainly got a lot out of it, as I think did Batley,” Dunning said.
In addition to many of the players who earned an unprecedented nine league victories the previous season, Dunning gave first-team debuts to three newcomers: Matty Hanley, who scored the long-range winning try, Ethan Newboult and 18-year-old Louis Beattie, the son of assistant coach Leigh Beattie.
Speaking of his colleague’s teenage offspring, Dunning enthused: “He trained hard with us most of last year!
“Is he ready to play every week? Possibly not, but we’ll certainly look to use him as cover should we get any injuries.”