O’CARROLL PLEASED WITH NEWCASTLE THUNDER HALF-TIME RESPONSE

Eamon O’ Carroll says his Newcastle Thunder side can take confidence from their first competitive game of the season, as the head coach reflects on last Sunday’s Betfred Challenge Cup fixture against Swinton Lions.

Thunder responded superbly to trailing by 16 points at half-time, fighting back to make the tie a one score game until a breakaway try in the final moments gave the Lions a 12-point win, with that fight one of the most pleasing factors for the coach.

“We can take some confidence out of the game, no doubt about that and one thing that really pleased me was the response after half time. We looked like a team and we looked like we could have gone on and possibly have won it.

“We lacked some composure with ball in the first half, with a few errors in there which isn’t like us and gave ourselves too much to do.

“There’s confidence though that there are some things that are fairly easy fixes. We defended pretty well through parts of the game, we created some really good opportunities, but it was just the execution off the back of those.”

With 13 players making their Thunder debuts there were plenty of performances that give a taste of what to expect from Thunder in 2021, with O’Carroll please with his charges’ efforts.

“I was pleased but not surprised by everyone. The Chapelhow twins were outstanding when they came of the bench and did everything that I asked of them, they put in plenty of effort and got us going forward and did loads of things off the ball.

Jack [Johnson} and Cian [Tyrer] returned the ball well, Sam Wilde had a ready strong game and was strong every time he carried the ball and Nathan Wilde did really well doing the dirty work that sometimes goes unnoticed, but I was definitely happy with them all.”