Brett Hodgson has looked ahead to the opening days of the Black & Whites’ pre-season campaign as several members of the squad return to action today.
Fourteen weeks of hard graft began in earnest earlier today at the Jacuzzi Elite Performance Centre for many of the club’s younger stars, including the likes of Cameron Scott, Jack Brown, and Connor Wynne, as well as new recruit Darnell McIntosh.
“It’s an exciting time; it’s always daunting for some players, but we’re ready to start making those improvements that we’ve spoken about heading into the new season.
“There’ll be some testing for the younger players and some one-on-one to go through too; it’s the perfect scenario for those lads to set the tone for the season.
“They’re all in a position where they want to be pushing to be chosen in that seventeen every week, and setting the tone for the rest of the players for the rest of pre-season is the perfect opportunity to get their foot in the door.
“The senior squad will return on the 8th, and everything will go up another level even further.”
He added: “We’re excited to have a couple more academy prospects added into the group again, and continue the development of those who joined us last year.
“I was fortunate to have 12 months to watch the academy and pick out some of the stand-out players – we’ll have three new faces this year, which we’ll announce full details of in due course.
“They’ve all excelled in their position and have a good body-type to be a success at this level. Ultimately, our five year plan is to have players from this area representing our club at first-team level, and this is all part of that.”
Hodgson also explained his delight to see the return of the reserves competition in 2022, which will help support the development of the younger players within the group.
“I’m really happy that the reserve competition in particular is coming back; I think that we’ve struggled as a game without that over the last few seasons with those players not having the opportunity to play every week.
“It benefits those academy players in particular which we feel have real promise to progress but aren’t quite ready to play in the first-team just yet. It ticks every box for us as an organisation.”
With several new faces set to link up with the first-team squad over the coming weeks, Hodgson also reviewed the squad’s recruitment so far following the latest addition in the form of Fijian international prop Kane Evans last week.
“We knew as soon as he became available that bringing him over would be a priority for us. We’ve been looking to add a big middle for a long time, and to bring in someone of Kane’s stature who has plenty of NRL experience under his belt is huge for us.
“He’s an enforcer and we’re expecting that he’ll come over and improve us. When you have someone of that size alongside Chris, Ligi, Manu and Andre, our pack is one to be feared if they’re playing at their best. We’re striving to get the best out of those players and we’ve learnt plenty of lessons on how to do that at the back end of the season.
“We established areas of improvement for us as a squad, and we feel that we have complimented our squad by adding quality in those areas; Joe Lovodua is coming over here with a point to prove, Kane speaks for himself in terms of his experience, and Darnell McIntosh adds some real speed on the edge which we needed to add.”
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