Dewsbury Rams centre Macaulay Hallett is aiming to reap the benefits of a full pre-season with the club.
Hallett joined Dewsbury half-way through last season from rivals Batley Bulldogs, and despite settling in well, the 22-year-old says he’s relishing the opportunity to take a running start ahead of 2018.
“I thought I started the year off a bit rocky with Batley, then I came over here and I thought we did really well,” said Hallett.
“We put a few wins together and obviously got to the semi-finals of the middle eights, which was unthinkable for the club earlier in the year.
“Overall, I thought last season was successful, but there were a few games where we did lose points where we shouldn’t have.
“This year we’ll be working on finishing those games off better, and hopefully that will mean a better 2018 season.
“And from a personal perspective, arriving half-way through the season last year, I didn’t get a pre-season under my belt.
“But having this pre-season means I get to know the boys a bit more, and the club a bit more too.”
The Rams have brought in a number of new faces in readiness for next season, and Hallett says the new players have settled into the club well.
“The new lads have been great so far,” he confirmed.
“It helped that a lot of them knew a lot of the players here anyway, so it meant they could feel more at home quicker.
“There certainly seems to be some big lads that have come, and that means it adds some size to the team.”
One fixture that most of the players are looking forward to is the Trans-Atlantic trip to Toronto, and Hallett is no different.
“It will be some experience going over there and certainly one we’ll be looking forward to.
“We won’t be going there to just take part, we want to go out there to test ourselves and try to win.
“But, overall, I think we have a good set of lads here, and many of them have played in a full-time set up, which could prove important in a semi-professional setting.
“Last year, we beat Toulouse, and we mixed it with most of the full-time teams, and hopefully that can lay the platform for us to achieve even more in 2018.”
