Jordan Lane has expressed frustration at a performance that “wasn’t good enough” from the Black & Whites, despite Hull progressing through to the quarter-finals of the Betfred Challenge Cup last night.
FC came through a challenging encounter against Featherstone, winning 34-14 at the Millennium Stadium with the Betfred Championship side proving to be a tough test for Brett Hodgson’s side.
And despite the win, Lane explained that there is plenty of room for improvement for the Airlie Birds after a frustrating second-half in West Yorkshire.
Speaking after the match, Lane said: “It wasn’t the best performance from us tonight! I feel like we’ve taken a couple of steps back from the first two rounds, but we’ll learn from that. The most important thing is we did enough to grind the win out and get into the next round.
“After that we’ll re-evaluate our performance pretty hard on Monday from tonight but there were plenty of areas that weren’t good enough. We’ve got a big game next week and we want to rectify what we’ve done tonight.
He continued: “We’ve won by 20 points and come away disappointed, which I guess shows the focus and ambition of the group. I didn’t think our defence was at it’s best tonight with our performances the last two weeks having been built on defence, but we’ll work hard next week to fix that.
“We’re a brand new team this year with new systems and new players, which we’ve shown in the first two weeks of the season. We’ll have the cup in the back of our mind through the next couple of weeks, but we’ve got some big games before then to focus on.”
Praising Featherstone, Lane added: “We knew Featherstone were going to throw the ball around tonight, they’ve got some key players that can play some good rugby in Craig Hall and Dane Chilsholm.
“They caught us off guard from the kick-off which we didn’t expect. We did enough to grab the win so happy days!
“We’re used to flat surfaces and playing uphill it really gets you on your legs. We found it hard defensively in the second half, and the in goals are only small too so we had to take a bit of our kicks which we didn’t always execute and gave away a few seven tackle sets.”
On his own performance and his recent stint at loose-forward, he added: ” I’m really enjoying my role at loose forward. It’s not really a position I’ve played professionally but it’s where I played when I was younger and I’m enjoying it.
“I’ve played back row for the past three or four years and filled in there tonight, and obviously I’m happy to play both roles or wherever else the team needs me to.
“I feel a lot fitter than I did two or three years ago and even fitter than I was a year ago. I don’t think I’d be able to play the role I am now last season with my engine. I wouldn’t be able to put in the push or off the ball work that I am now without the hard work in pre-season.”
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