Dewsbury Rams head coach Lee Greenwood is excited about seeing his team play on boxing day Vs Batley.
The game will kick off at 12pm at the Tetley’s Stadium.
On the upcoming fixture Greenwood said: “I am looking forward to seeing how the lads play because they have trained hard. There is only so much you can do in training and then you need to see them play.
“It will give us an idea what we need to knuckle down and work on before the season starts. Obviously we have got Keighley and Bradford to play before we kick off the season.
“From where the lads are in training and how we have planned pre-season a game now is useful and we knew we had this game too. It will be a good marker of what we need to work on.
“They probably feel like I do, there is only so much training you can do before we need to see what we are like in games.”
Greenwood has been impressed with the players’ effort and determination in training. He insists it is good to see them wanting to play in this game.
He commented: “It’s good that the lads want to play, because usually it would get in the way of pre-season and Christmas. However I think with the way we have structured pre-season this ends the first phase of it.
“We want to give a good account of ourselves and whilst not for league points. We know if we can put in a good performance then it gets the fans excited and behind us going into the season.
“We will see what the performance is like, I learnt a lot last year and it wasn’t great being honest. We battled hard and it sort of gave us a good idea of where we were at. Not great quality wise but we stuck at it, we stuck in games and lost out by only one try in some matches.
“There is a good feeling around the squad, taking games out of the equation I think there is a better attitude in the squad this year. That was a thing I wanted to change last year, the attitude and culture. It can change once the games start and you pick your 17.
“You might go through tough times and defeats and you’ll have challenges and that’s when you get to see what people are like then. However for now there has been no games, no one left out and no tellings off so it’s all alright at the moment.
“I can’t fault any player at the minute they have all thrown themselves into what we have put in front of them.”
Finally Greenwood revealed some players won’t make it to play on boxing day.
He said: “Chris Annakin and Jason Walton are definitely missing the game. There are a couple of doubts, however it looks like Jon Magrin will make it.
“Myself and the fans will get a chance to see pretty much everyone in the squad with a few exceptions which is good.”
