New Earswick ARLC travel to unbeaten Dewsbury Moor in the Pennine League championship needing to bounce back from last week’s 42-18 defeat at Ackworth.

The two-week lay-off did not work in All Blacks’ favour as they were poor in defence, a point not lost on assistant-coach Simon Malarkey.

“We need a 200 per cent increase in performance if we are to take two points from Dewsbury Moor, and that means the same effort has to be put in at training,” he said.

Numbers attending training have being erratic. Club spokesman Phill Pallister said: “Players who have been training are training hard, but numbers attending training are not high enough for the coaching team to work on certain aspects of what is going wrong. Nobody when asked last Saturday said they were not available for training yet only 22 players turned up on Tuesday.

“We are still in touch with the leaders and need to push on.”

Prop Jack Stearman could be out for 12 weeks due to the elbow injury suffered while representing Scotland in the European Cup. Liam Gargan and Ben Jones could return to the first team, the latter after illness.

New Earswick ‘A’ host Newsome Panthers in division four. Ady Robinson is a doubt after a facial injury last week, as is Liam Davison, who has a leg strain.