RUGBY LEAGUE: McRae ready to test his men
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Your support makes all the difference.SHAUN McRAE, the Gateshead Thunder coach, has warned the game not to expect too much from his newly assembled side on its first outing tonight.
The new Super League club play Castleford at Wheldon Road, but McRae, the former St Helens coach who has been given the task of moulding them into a team, says that the result is not crucial. "I think it's more important to Castleford than to us. Stuart Raper has told me that he will be fielding his strongest side. They have five new players and a Challenge Cup tie coming up in two weeks, so we have to expect a bit of a barrage," he said.
"For us, it is a matter of everyone getting 40 minutes football, including some players from whom I don't know what to expect." Those unknown quantities include Epi Taione, an 18 stone Tongan winger introduced to the club by Va'aiga Tuigamala, and several local trialists who are the product of amateur rugby league in the North-east.
Gateshead's extensive colony of Australians will also get their first taste of playing together, with McRae looking for the combinations that will help his side establish their credentials quickly when Super League kicks off in March.
Gateshead are not competing in the Challenge Cup and will have just one more friendly before meeting Leeds in their first league game on 7 March. "There's some responsibility on me as captain," said Kerrod Walters, the former Australian Test hooker who is the Thunder's most experienced player. "But there's a responsibility on all the players to see how quickly we can gel."
Walters was also captain of the new franchise at the Adelaide Rams during their brief, two-year existence, but says that the mood at Gateshead is more like that at Brisbane, when the Broncos were embarking on their climb to the top of the Australian game.
"You've got to get things right off the field as well, and I feel we're doing that in Gateshead," Walters said.
Castleford will give debuts to three new imports, James Pickering, Aaron Raper and Dale Fritz, whilst the Great Britain centre Alan Hunte will make his first appearance for Warrington against his old club, St Helens, tonight.
Wigan, who are to discuss the possibility of John Monie extending the year he has left on his coaching contract, may bring their former coach, Graeme West, back to Central Park as one of his assistants. West was sacked as coach of Widnes last year and has since been working outside the game.
The Rugby League's annual meeting today will discuss the difficulty in finding dates for the Five Nations internationals this season, now that a 30-game Super League season necessitates midweek games. "We hope that a solution can be found, but it is starting to become urgent," said a League spokesman.
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