Fylde RFC plan for 2022/23 but season's business is unfinished

Four games of the current campaign remain, though little is at stake for the Woodlands club.

Six defeats in National Two North this season have proved too many to sustain a title challenge as top two Hull and Rotherham have been beaten only twice.

The same applies to tomorrow’s hosts Stourbridge, who set the pace in the first half of the season but fell away and are now just a point above Fylde in fourth.

Fylde’s joint-head coach Alex Loney insists the players remain fully focused, though there has been scope to look ahead to 2022/23, when the division will be reduced to 14 clubs from 16.

Loney revealed the intention is very much to keep the current squad together and improve it.

He told The Gazette: “We are well on the way with contracts to keep the vast majority of the squad, if not all of them, for next season.

“We’re very happy with the players we have and we’ve already started looking at recruitment, so we will hopefully have some good signings to make the squad even more competitive.”

Fylde bounced back from their defeat at Hull Ionians with a 35-22 home victory over Luctonians last weekend, seeing out the final 20 minutes with 14 men after Henry Hadfield was sent off.

Loney’s fellow head coach Chris Briers said: “It was a tough game and obviously we did not expect anything else. We thought they could come and disrupt us, but we felt more than comfortable and happy to deal with everything they threw at us.

“We had seen a press article which gave us added motivation, saying their pack was looking to dominate ours, and that gave us added incentive to prove them wrong.”

Tomorrow’s match at Stourbridge may no longer have any bearing on the title race but Briers insists that determination is as great as ever.

He added: “I understand that people can get a bit lethargic towards the end of the season but our attitude is that we want to perform week in, week out, regardless of any promotion issues at stake.

“We have talked about finishing as high as possible in the table to reflect how we’ve performed over the season. We feel that top four would be a fair reflection.”