DEWSBURY RAMS coach Paul March is assessing the fitness of Brad Graham as he builds towards Saturday’s pre-season game against Bradford at the FLAIR Stadium.
The outside back who has returned to the Rams after a season at Halifax picked up an ankle issue during the Boxing Day Challenge defeat by Batley.
The hosts were beaten 18-0, and while March was encouraged by some aspects of his side’s performance, he wants to see more chances created against Bradford as he prepares for the Championship opener at Hunslet eight days later.
“There were some good displays from a few of the lads defensively, but we need to learn from the performance with ball in hand and hopefully we can create a few more opportunities in our next game,” he told the Dewsbury Reporter.
“(Prop) Luke Nelmes carried the ball really well and his talking defensive work was good.
“And young George Rayner (signed from Bradford) came on and played winger, and he caught everything.
“(Forward) Jacob Bateman has signed on a season-long loan (from Bradford) for an opportunity to get his career back on track and he had some good spells.”
March added: “It was good to get a hit-out and get the lads some time on the pitch.
“We were clunky with the ball in hand. We didn’t get into the right areas of the field to question them as much as we wanted to. It could be credit to them, but it was more us letting them off the hook by coming up with errors.
“In the first half, we had four good ball sets and made mistakes four times. We released pressure on them and when you do that, teams like Batley can go down the other end and capitalise.
“They scored their tries on the back of back-to-back sets where the lads were in a washing-machine cycle and they weren’t thinking quick enough and they took advantage.
“But with the amount of ball they had, I thought we were okay overall, and there’s a lot more to come.”
March ran the rule over three young trialist backs who have been in development systems elsewhere – Aaron Lyne (Huddersfield), Sam Spencer (Bradford) and Alfie Wall (Hull KR).