WHITEHAVEN coach Anthony Murray is backing his young squad to rise to the challenge presented by the new Championship season.
After a turbulent 2024, Whitehaven rebuilt and recorded seven wins in League One last season, with Murray retaining a large portion of that squad.
Their start to the season involved successive matches against Sheffield, in league and Challenge Cup, to give an early indication as to how they might fare.
Murray said: “It’s going to be a massive challenge playing in the Championship, playing against teams who have been well established in the division, like Sheffield, and the rosters they have and their experience.
“It (the merging of the lower tiers) needed to happen. There needed to be a change and it’s a challenge we need to embrace.
“As players and coaches, you want to be playing week in, week out and playing at the highest level you can, and I’m sure the players will embrace it.
“We’ve got a really young squad, inexperienced, but the only way you can get experience is by playing at the higher level. It will be challenging but we’ve got to hit it head-on and get out of it what we’re looking for as a team and a club.
“We want to keep improving as a squad. We’ve got a young team and our job as coaches is to guide those players and encourage them and help them be the best they can.
“Our aim is to turn those close games that we missed out on last year into wins. We had games where we lost by two, four, six points, and in all of those we were leading, so we want to close those kind of matches out better than we did last year.”