Wakefield Wildcats: Dickens: We must go ‘set for set’ with Leeds to give ourselves a chance

Dickens fears his team will get blown away if errors or indiscipline give Rhinos an overwhelming share of possession.

“One thing we’ve struggled with all year is the amount of ball we’ve had,” Dickens said. “At the end of last Sunday’s game against Castleford they had had 11 more sets than us.

“The general trend that’s happened is the other team have had somewhere between eight and 14 more sets than us.

“There’s been a couple of remarks made about the fitness of the players. If you look at our fitness results, they are no different to any other club’s.

“But when a team’s having 10, 12 or 14 sets more than you, that has a massive effect on how you play the game.”

Dickens admitted: “To give ourselves a chance, we need to try and go set-for-set.

“Leeds are probably not the most structured team, but they’ve got some outstanding individuals. They’ve got some players who are really good at offloading and some smart players, Burrow, Aiton, McGuire, those type of people who are really good at playing on the back of offloads and quick play-the-balls.

“Our ability to be able to make some tackles and win some good tackles as well is going to be really important to giving ourselves a chance to build a platform to play on the back of. We go into every game to try and win. If we play to the best of our ability, we’ll give ourselves a chance.”