ONCE again, the weather caused disruption this week and that always makes it difficult for your preparation, but the weather has warmed up now and hopefully we can get back into our normal weekly routine, looking at the process of Rugby League.

The players have been frustrated at the stop start approach to the season; we have had a game then a week off then a game again and that means you can’t get into any continuity.

That is the one game a week habit that we all look forward to, but the postponements mean we now have four games in a relatively very short time.

We prepared for Hunslet last week in the Challenge Cup and this week it will be an entirely different game.

For a start it is at Odsal and that means the pitch size is different and the pitch conditions may well be different, so there will be a slightly different emphasis this week but preparing for the same opposition two weeks in succession means we have prepared well upon their individuals and we feel as if we know them well now.

The Challenge Cup game has been rearranged for Easter Monday and that is not ideal. I feel for the fans who have already made alternative arrangements for the Bank Holiday, but we have to be honest and the difficulty was the availability of Hunslet’s Stadium.

They are not the prime tenants of the stadium and therefore could not just arrange it for midweek, as most of the other postponed games were.

They had to liaise with their landlords, Leeds City Council and Easter Monday was one day when it was free but there was no way at all that they were taking out a home fixture for their cup game.

We have a duty to our season ticket holders and this will be our first home game, as we have already lost the London Skolars fixture to the weather.

There was no way we were going to lose another, so we dug our heels in and outcome has been an Easter Monday Cup game.

If we had been playing a club with primacy of tenure, like a Leeds or a Wakefield, then obviously the game would have been played this week.

We have seen a case of one player come in and one player go out this week. James Davies has joined Keighley on a month’s loan.

He has done everything we have asked of him and he’s been playing really well for our reserve grade side but there are only 17 shirts in the first team and it’s a matter of keeping players improving and keeping players playing games, so we took the decision to allow him to go for a month.

Jake Butler-Fleming has come into the group and that goes right back to when I first came to the club. I thought the main weakness in the squad was that we didn’t have enough three-quarters.

We took steps to rectify that by bringing in Gregg McNally and Dalton Grant and we also added Alex Brown, but his personal circumstances have changed, and he has left us, so we were on the lookout and the opportunity to add Jake came up. He fitted the bill straight away, as he can play anywhere for full Back to wing to centre.

It is a very busy period for all our teams at the moment and the coaching staff are certainly earning their money, but it is a very exciting time, seeing where each team is at and where each individual is at.

it’s great to see where we can progress for the future. Obviously, it won’t last forever because the under-16’s have a seven-game season and the reserves only ten so we have to put it in perspective because there will be other periods when there is a lull and we can just concentrate on the first team and the under-19 academy.

Speaking of the under-19 side, they put in a great performance at Dudley Hill in the fog against a very strong City of Hull side.

That team was a very good one indeed and they included players who had played first team, such as Dagger and Oakes at York and some had played in the first team at Hull KR, but our lads stood up to it well and were only just edged out at the end.

It will have done them the world of good to have played in a very tough uncompromising game like that.