North Wales preview: time to back up on Hornets triumph

Bears head coach Rich Squires has revealed his 21-man squad for Sunday’s trip to the North Wales Crusaders, and. says his side will go into this weekend’s game ‘quietly confident’.

It’s the Bears’ first outing since last weekend’s spectacular 38-30 victory over Rochdale Hornets, and a chance for the Midlanders to put together back-to-back wins for the first time this season.

Speaking to our official podcast, Bear Necessities, after last week’s game, Squires promised more performances of that ilk this year.

He said: “If we match that, we’ll take any team on. We did it against Barrow, got the result against West Wales, and kind of went in too confident against Skolars - but we’ll learn from that as a group. We know exactly what we need to do, and we can’t get ahead of ourselves, but we’ll go in quietly confident this week.

“I guarantee there will be more results like that across the board this season. We’ve got a very confident group and good ability across the squad. Come and watch us - it’ll be entertaining stuff.”

The Bears were certainly in an entertaining mood at the Butts last Sunday, scoring seven excellent tries.

Player/coach Dave Scott also wants his troops to back up last weekend’s landmark victory with a positive performance across the border this weekend.

He said: “We’ve got momentum on our side, so that’s a massive positive. We’ve managed to turn it around from last week, which is what we wanted.

“Looking at North Wales, they’ve had some close games and it’s not going to be an easy trip whatsoever - it’s a massive challenge for us and we need to make sure we turn up and do a job. That means improving on what we did last Sunday - we did well against Rochdale, but we can better. There’s more to come from the Bears.”

As part of the ongoing coronavirus restrictions, supporters are not yet permitted to attend sporting events in Wales, so no away fans will be able to travel this Sunday. However, the game will be streamed live via the OurLeague platform - streaming tickets can be purchased here.

BEARS SQUAD V NORTH WALES CRUSADERS

Stefanos Bastas

Sam Bowring

Will Budd

Jed Charlton

Dan Coates

Chris Cullimore

Jack Dawson

Darius Hamilton

Nathan Hill

Brad Ho

Harry Kaufman

Ryan Langton

Reece rance

Peter Ryan

Dave Scott

Keiran Sherratt

Elliot Townsend

Liam Welham

Kadeem Williams