This weekend London Skolars will welcome the newest club to the division, Coventry Bears to the New River stadium (3pm) for what promises to be a hotly contested affair.
The Bears only entered the Kingstone Press League One competition this season and have already made their impact felt. This season they have racked up two wins against two of the more established southern clubs in Oxford RLFC and more impressively against Hemel Stags where they surpassed the fifty point mark, these two victories mean they are 11th in the table and two places above Skolars. They will undoubtedly be looking to improve on their scalp list with an impressive performance this weekend, and they will be buoyed by their most recent result, a tight clash with the prestigious Barrow Raiders where they were eventually edged out 22-4 at home. Although at times they have had players on dual registration from Super League side Hull KR, the one to watch out for is Jamahl Hunte, a pacey winger, he has scored 5 tries so far this season in this competition.
Although the Bears are above Skolars in the league table, this will be no easy game for the midlands side. The Skolars are coming into this game on the back of undoubtedly their performance of the season against the newly crowned Ipro sport cup winners North Wales Crusaders where they lost 18-10 after leading for long periods of the game. This side, full of talent and experience at higher levels is finally starting to gel and get to grips with the new systems that have been put into place under the new coaching staff. It will be very exciting to see whether the Skolars can progress again this week now they are at home. The very good performance last week did however come at a cost for the Skolars, with hard working strong performer Will Fairhurst out with a knee injury and Dave Ellison also doubtful with a nasty concussion. However the club could be ready to welcome back the creative focal point of the side in Mikey Bishay as well as Louis Robinson. The game will also be the first chance to welcome John Paxton back for his first home game since his knee operation, and congratulate him on entering a select club of those to have made over 100 starts for the club.
Jermaine Coleman had this to say,
‘As coaches, both Matt and I are happy with the progress we made last week against north wales but are still disappointed with the final result. The style and systems are slowly becoming habitual to the playing group and it is good to see these being implemented with relative success. However we feel we need to become more clinical during our dominant periods of games. We should enter this game confident, but not arrogant as Coventry possess a lot of ability score points as seen against Hemel but also good resilience as shown by their most recent result. We are aware of these threats and will be preparing accordingly.’
There will also be another bucket collection for the late Danny Jones this weekend, plenty of reasons to get down to New River and watch the greatest game of all, tickets are available on the door if you haven’t purchased for this thriller already.
