Rotherham Titans strive for maximum points haul on final stretch

Titans collected five points for their win at Tynedale last week while leaders Hull took four from their nervy 24-19 victory over second-placed Sedgley Park.

That leaves half a dozen points between Rotherham and the Humbersiders, who will need to lose one of their remaining games and drop points in others to leave the door open for Adam Byron's men to take top spot.

With Sedgley now three points further back, the Lancashire outfit have extra work to do to get back into contention.

The twist is Hull's tricky run-in compared to Rotherham's, which is against teams in the bottom half, starting at home to Loughborough Students tomorrow.

“We can only control our own performances. We will just have to keep going out and getting five points,” head coach Byron told the Advertiser.

“We would have preferred Sedg to win last week in order to keep Hull closer but it's only a six-point gap and when we look at the run-in, we'd prefer to be chasing Hull rather than Sedg, so we're not too unhappy with it.

“Hull have still got to go to Fylde. They've got the Hull derby against Ionians and their final game is away at Luctonians. Sedg's fixtures tend to follow ours. They play our opponents a week or two after us.”

Titans could welcome back forward Matti Williams this weekend but injuries continue to bite hard, highlighted during the hard shift in the sun up at Tynedale.

“We have nine or ten forwards out and we only had four on the bench on Saturday, of which only three were fit to go on,” said Byron.

“If we had needed to call on Harry Newborn as a hooker then we would have done but we are still trying to manage him. He is not quite ready to come back yet.

“When the sun is shining as it was, to ask a representative of your pack to do 80 minutes is a big ask and that's probably how Tynedale came back into in the second half.

“Our boys started to tire and Tynedale used their heads sensibly and managed to get some late scores.”

Titans blitzed Loughborough 71-5 on their artificial pitch back in November but come to Clifton Lane fresh from a 55-0 rout of bottom side Harrogate last week.

Byron warned: “Loughborough are a different kind of team at this kind of year because their BUCS season has finished and they have access to a much bigger group of players.

“They will want to come and throw the ball around a bit but we'll be ready for them.”

Kick-off is 2pm.