Featherstone Rovers boss James Ford demands improvement after 'standards slipped' against Whitehaven

Rovers beat Whitehaven 28-24, but made things hard for themselves with errors that kept their hosts in the game until the final hooter.

"I’m pleased to go back to Yorkshire with the points, but the standards of our performance just wasn’t good enough,” said Ford.

"I don’t want to take anything away from Whitehaven – I thought they played well and had opportunities to win the game – but across the board, missing tackles, making errors, giving penalties we just came away with stuff away from the script.

"We need to improve and we need to have much higher standards than that.

"Obviously there has been some adversity with key players missing, new combinations and some blokes coming into the team who haven’t spent much time at all with the group.

"But we don’t want to go down that path and making excuses, there was more than enough ability on that field to play to a higher level than what they did.”

Ford is clearly looking for an improvement in this Sunday’s home game when Fev take on Halifax Panthers at the Millennium Stadium.

He added: “We need to go after it in our prep and build towards Halifax.”

There were some postives to take forward from the Whitehaven game, particularly the performance of Connor Jones in an emergency half-back role.

Ford explained: “Regards Jonesy, he did okay for a hooker playing in the halves. He’s quick and he was a threat a couple of times.

"He broke the line near the end and could have put the game to bed for us, but it was a great last ditch tackle by Whitehaven. It was a good kick for Wynne’s try and almost another one as well.

"We’ve got some work to do and haven’t nailed down the combinations on the right edge, but he’s certainly given me food for thought.”

Rovers lost Connor Wynne and Jack Bussey to injuries in the game, but Ford is hoping both will be okay to play this week.