Halifax Panthers preview: Batley Bulldogs’ ‘togetherness’ impresses Simon Grix ahead of West Yorkshire derby

Fax go into the game on the back of a 42-14 defeat at Widnes, while Batley will be looking for a second successive victory following a dramatic 28-23 win over Keighley.

Both sides, however, have two wins and two defeats after the first four rounds of fixtures.

Ahead of the game, Grix said:

“We’re in for a tough one. Batley are a good team. They had a good year last year but we just need to get back to basics.

“Batley have built their game on togetherness and they have been able to find it more, more often than they haven’t. That is something that we need to be better at.

“They are always good, tight games. Both teams are in that same position where, off the back of a couple of good years, neither have started well and are just trying to find their way.

“We just need to get our heads down. There are going to be mistakes and errors. Our reactions just need to be better and, individually, we need to step it up a bit.”

After an inconsistent start to the 2023 campaign, Grix insists it’s not a time to “panic” and believes his side will “come back stronger” after Monday night’s heavy loss.

“For us there are lots of improvements to be made,” he admitted. “We’re not going to panic, it’s four rounds in. One of them was Fev away which is a tough place to go, there is no shame in that.”

He added: “We will lick our wounds and we have to come back stronger. We are a good performance away from feeling a lot better about ourselves. We are a different beast to what we were a couple of years ago in the sense that we’re not necessarily underdogs anymore - expectation is that we should be winning every week. That brings a bit of pressure. It is all part of the puzzle.”

Grix also confirmed that Joe Keyes will miss out due to the head injury protocol but, aside from that, he should have a fully fit squad to choose from.