Tony Smith has previewed Saturday’s Betfred Super League Round 7 fixture against Huddersfield Giants.
The Black & Whites are aiming to return to winning ways this weekend at the MKM Stadium, facing the Giants for the second time in a fortnight.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference, Smith said: “Our confidence is down – we’re not on fire at the moment and we’re not winning games. We’ve been conceding soft tries. It’s easy for us to then lose confidence, make a mistake, and put our heads down when something goes wrong.
“It’s human nature. But we’ve just got to toughen up so that when something goes wrong, we don’t drop our heads and we fight harder and work harder. When we do that, we can compete with anybody, even a team that is in red-hot form.
“It’s a really hard formula in rugby league or any other sport, to give a team momentum and then try to stem the flow, that’s the crazy way to do it, but we managed to do that last week. That encourages me that if we get our timing right and start to do that from the start of matches, well then it’s a whole lot easier to compete.
“It doesn’t mean that you’re always going to win, but you can compete and give yourself a chance. When you’re allowing 28 points to go in unanswered, then you’re not going to win too many games.”
Smith continued: “We’ve got a young team. We had a young team at the start of the year. We’ve got a younger team at the moment. We’ve got to learn and we’ve got to learn quickly.
“Work harder, put your hand up, go front up, go watch it, go own it, go rectify it, work harder to fix it. There are no secret formulas. I keep saying this. We all match other sports, I do it, and go ‘Why don’t they just do this?’ It’s easy when you say it quickly. We’ve got to go and work hard. We’ve got to get more determined.
“There’s a formula in life that if you work hard, then you become successful. That’s it. If you’re not prepared to work hard enough, then you won’t be successful. You’ve got to work hard. We can’t sit in our team room, watch videos and go out on the field, and not work hard and expect to be successful. We’ve got to work harder.”
Tony Smith is proudly sponsored by Rowe Freight.
STORY SPONSOR
