Brett Hodgson is expecting a tough challenge ahead of the Black & Whites on Friday evening, despite going up against a depleted Huddersfield outfit.
Hull go up against a Giants side on their return to the KCOM Stadium, who have only been able to name a 13-man squad in advance of the match due to injuries and international call-ups.
The West Yorkshire side are expected to name more players to their squad ahead of the match tomorrow, but Hodgson is under no illusions as to the difficult match in prospect despite an extensive list of players missing for both sides, while expressing his excitement to be back in front of home fans.
Speaking in his pre-match press conference, brought to you in association with Jacuzzi, Hodgson said: “We’re excited to be home; we’ve leant some things since we last played at the KCOM Stadium against Catalans Dragons in May. We can’t wait to be back in front of our fans.
“Last time out at home, we put in a very good performance for 65 minutes of that game – we just conceded too many points at the end of the game, partly because we was down to 12 men.
“Momentum and consistency is really important at this stage of the season. We need to keep building on that this weekend.”
Hodgson also reflected on the current injury situation at both clubs, with Hull and the Giants announcing reduced squad ahead of the fixture.
“Joe Cator is fifty-fifty for this game, as is Cameron Scott. We’re still without Scott Taylor, Carlos Tuimavave and Josh Bowden – those three are the closest to being back on our injury list.
“We need to respect the game in front of us. We know Huddersfield have a weakened squad but we’ll be preparing the same as we always would.
“They’ll miss some key men who are selected for the All Stars but we’re still clear of the challenge ahead of us.”
On the players who have been selected for the Combined Nations All Stars game, he continued: “They deserve to be there, and there are a few more who were pretty unlucky. But we’re in a situation where we are without a number of key men; it’s the same for a lot of clubs this weekend though so we have no problems with it.
“All players want to play representative football, and those three definitely deserve to be in conversations about doing so given how they have performed for us this season.”
Hodgson also discuss the loan signing Jack Logan, who returns to the Black & White for a four week spell.
“Obviously we are thin on numbers with some of our players being injured but we felt we needed to bring in someone to give us a bit of cover.
“Jack has history with the club and had some good performances with us before; he is an avid Hull FC supporters and is looking forward to getting back into that full-time environment.
“He had ticked all of the boxes but is aware that he comes into the system to support what we are trying to achieve and it doesn’t nessicerily mean he’s going to be starting for us.”
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