THIS week we make the long trip to Whitehaven and we have made adjustments to our schedule, as I didn’t think we got things right when we went to Workington earlier in the season.

Everything was a bit rushed and we didn’t seem to have time to get our breath and start the game as efficiently as we wanted to, so we have adjusted timings and little things logistically.

It’s obviously a hurdle but one I think we will handle much better this time.

Whitehaven are a tough side, particularly on their own ground and this was one of the ‘red letter’ games I earmarked because I felt this would be a big challenge.

Firstly, because it is a Cumbrian team on their own ground, which is always a tough ask and there will be partisan crowd and secondly, because they are doing things tough themselves financially at this time.

It all adds to the occasion and the difficulty of the task, but if you are going to be successful, then you have to handle these difficulties and come out of the other side smiling and with a positive outcome.

I feel a lot of sympathy for them in their current plight. We, as a club, have been there, seen the film and got the t-shirt! It makes it really difficult for the players, coaching staff and the board of directors and very much so for the supporters.

We would like to take a big following, which will in part go towards alleviating those difficulties, as there will be some cash flow in the immediate future.

I’d like as many Bulls fans as possible to go there, not only to help Whitehaven but also, when we are doing it tough, to get behind the team and enable us to grab some energy from somewhere, when otherwise it might not have been there.

Last week I thought we played well against a very difficult North Wales side. We thought all along they were going to present us with a challenge but for the first 40 minutes I thought we played some real high-quality rugby.

We started the second half very well but then we had a 15-minute period when things didn’t quite go so well for us.

I don’t know if we took our foot off the gas or whether North Wales picked up their game, but we had an uncomfortable 15 minutes when we conceded a couple of tries and they were denied another by a forward pass.

Whatever it was, we have got to address the issue in order to attempt to maintain consistency throughout the full 80 minutes.

There we some good performances from our side. Matty Garside took the individual Man of the Match award but I thought our whole left edge of Chisholm, Smith, Ryan and Garside were all excellent and they caused all sorts of problems for the right side of the Crusaders’ defence.

Of course, you have to have the foundations to do that, and the big guys up front laid a great platform for them.

There were some downsides too with injuries to Gregg McNally, Mikey Wood and Sam Hallas. We will have to see how they scrub up to find out if they will be available for this game and, if they are not, to see how long they will be out.