SHEFFIELD EAGLES coach Craig Lingard is looking forward to a run of regular games after a spasmodic start to the season.
The South Yorkshire side went into their big home match against Barrow on Saturday, which they won 22-6, on the back of just one outing in three weekends, the 34-6 Challenge Cup third-round defeat by Super League Warrington.
Sheffield had a bye round before that, then after it found themselves inactive due to the demise of their scheduled opponents Halifax.
Instead Lingard, whose team were in Championship action for only the second time against Barrow (they won 11-4 at Whitehaven in round one), organised an opposed training session against community side Hunslet ARLFC.
Now he is preparing for a trio of away trips – to Hunslet and Rochdale in the league, then Swinton in the preliminary round of the 1895 Cup – before a meeting with Oldham at the Steel City Stadium on Saturday, March 21.
“It’s been pretty stop-start, and that came on the back of a disrupted pre-season due to the weather, so it will be good to finally have a chance to try to build some momentum,” he explained.
“It’s a fairly new group, so we’re still working on combinations, and having had a warm-up game at Batley postponed, we could have done with more frequent matches early in the season, but it is what it is, and we just have to get on with it.
“The Hunslet amateurs session was a useful exercise. You can try to simulate a competitive game by splitting your own squad, but they are familiar with the way each other play and the calls, so you don’t get that element of the unknown.
“We were grateful to Hunslet amateurs for helping us out, and hopefully they got something out of it too.”
Having featured in the first two rounds of the Challenge Cup, the south Leeds side are preparing for participation in the new National Community Rugby League National Premier League.