London Broncos lead coach Mike Eccles felt there were plenty of positives to come out of their 42-0 defeat to Warrington Wolves in the Challenge Cup.
The Plough Lane-based club are without a win since being promoted to the Super League and face Huddersfield Giants next on Sunday.
Broncos trailed 24-0 at the interval against Warrington last weekend with Matty Ashton claiming a hat-trick. Josh Thewlis crossed twice.
“I was really proud of them,” said Eccles when asked for his assessment of Broncos’ display.
“You look at what we’ve got out there – the squarest of pegs in round holes. We’ve got a prop in the back row, a centre in the other back row and a kid in the academy who has just stepped up – he has barely trained first-team let alone played it.
“Joe Stock has come on and been absolutely sensational.
“We have got Jack Hughes in there who is a tight five rugby union transition – he got his opportunity a lot earlier than he’d have expected due to injuries and whatnot is going on at the minute.
“We had Jensen Monk out there, his first involvement, he puts an unbelievable little chip kick through to the corner.
“There are loads of things in there to be celebrated.
“We left a couple of tries out there. I seem to keep be saying that – that’s the difference as well with a Super League-standard game. The (Alex) Walker one and the (Gideon) Boafo one – they are normally tries, aren’t they? The extra effort defensively from them just prevented us from getting on the scoreboard.”
Wolves had also defeated Broncos 58-4 the weekend before in the Super League at Plough Lane.
Asked if his team had produced an improved showing this time around, Eccles said: “They torched us last week.
“What probably surprised us a little bit is the pace they have got. They really hurt. The games I’d watched, bar the Catalan one which was round one, all the pitched they had played on were really muddy fields.
“They came to us and they had a surface like this (on Sunday). That blew us away.
“We were a little more ready for them with a much weaker team on paper. There was a massive improvement on the scoreboard, but I also thought in the performance as well.”
PICTURE: PAUL COWAN
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