Moore: Kear will have Bulldogs fired up

Moore worked with Kear at Wakefield and knows the Challenge Cup-winning coach, who has already inspired his low-budget side to wins over two of the Championship’s full time sides - Leigh and Sheffield - in the opening three weeks of the season, will be eyeing a hat trick of upsets this weekend.

“I’ve been lucky enough to work with John at Wakefield and I really enjoyed the time I had there with him,” said Moore.

“If there’s one thing he can do, it is get you up for a game.

“He loves the underdog mentality and he’ll be telling them ‘We can go there and win’ and ‘We can make that top four’.

“We know that though and we’ll make sure we’re ready for them.

“We’re lucky enough to have a healthy squad at the moment.

“There’s a lot of competition for places; we had three changes at Workington and everyone knows if you don’t pull your weight, you’ll be out.

“We’ll have a good week now, a good preparation and look forward to playing at home again.

“You could tell the lads were already excited about that straight after the Workington game.”

Fax go into Sunday’s game in second place on the league ladder, ahead of five other teams with two wins on points difference after last weekend’s 20-0 win at Workington.

“We knew we had to react after the loss at Sheffield and rip in for each other,” said Moore.

“Conditions weren’t ideal, but we had a job to do and we did it well.

“The pleasing thing for me was keeping them to nil, we put in a really good defensive performance.

“I reckon they would have looked at the weather and the field and thought they’d got a 50/50 chance in that game, because it definitely evens things up.

“But you could tell the way we warmed up and the talk in the dressing room that we were ready to play.

“When we split off in the warm up, we spoke and said ‘it’s going to be won in the middle’ and we made sure we did that.”