Hull’s director of rugby Gary Pearce described Saturday’s victory over Loughborough Students as a banana skin and praised his players for showing the resolve needed to get the win. The 26-19 win was Hull’s fifth win from six and saw them climb to third in the table. Pearce paid tribute to the Students who he called the closest team to being professional his side will face this season.
“That’s about as close to a professional team we have played because they train so much and they are so well organised,” Pearce said.
“Our lads stuck at it and we came strong at the back end of the game.
“Once again, I am really proud of the lads and they continue to defend with their hearts.
“We can be better in attack, but we don’t half defend well.
“They had three or four players that came in from Wasps or Saracens to strengthen their squad, so they have quality about them.
“This was a banana skin game for us.
“What impressed me was our resolve at the end of the game and in the second half really.
“We dominated the first 20 minutes and we should have scored a few tries more when we were hammering at the line four or five times.
“They were always going to have good moments in the game and we struggled to hang on until half time.
“They seemed to have a lot of the ball and they are good players, very young and very fit. It was nothing we didn’t expect.
“We tried to keep the ball away from them, we ended up trying to play a bit of a game with them.
“We made a few errors and that’s the last thing you can do against a young team like that.”
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