After losing heavily to Dewsbury Rams in their final pre-season game, London Broncos coach Andrew Henderson was pleased with the 22-0 win at Oldham.
“The mentality of the players the week leading up to the Oldham game was great, they really were training with some intent and purpose. We had a simple but effective plan which we executed fairly well but it was the defensive mentality and the attitude which pleased me the most. To win 22-0 in fairly tough conditions was a good result.
“I’ve spoken to the players about Swinton. They’ll be a different team to Oldham. I know (coach) John Duffy and he’s going to want to play an attacking brand of football. I see them as being a team that will try to shift the ball around a little bit and ask a few more questions of our defensive line. I’m expecting a different challenge this week.
“Secondly you’re playing on a fast track at this stage of the season whereas a lot of teams are playing on heavy boggy pitches. I certainly think we can catch a few teams on the hop. The kicking game’s a big factor, the ball bounces differently on these pitches and we’re fortunate that our kickers can get on it most days and work on their kicking game whereas teams who are not used it come here and may find they struggle a bit on this surface
John Duffy’s Swinton Lions came close to causing an upset against Dewsbury last week: “I was very pleased with last week’s performance,” he said. “It was only our second hit-out and I was very proud of the boys. They showed up well against a very good, well-coached Dewsbury side. But we can’t rest, we’ve got to try and get better each week.
“We’ve nothing to lose this season, we’ve just got to give a good account of ourselves week-in-week-out. London are a well-coached side and they’ve got some great players so we’re really going to have to come up with a good game plan to overcome them.”
Centre Stuart Littler is likely to be out for a couple of weeks with a shoulder injury.
