Marshall content as Fax head into break on back of a big win

A week after falling victim to Toronto’s match winning first half blitz in London, Fax dished out one of their own, scoring five converted tries - including four in the first 20 minutes - as they opened up a 30-0 interval lead.

And while the visitors were nowhere near as fluent after the break, they still head into a rare weekend off in good shape.

“We scored some nice points in the first half,” said Marshall.

“We looked to play with a little bit more width, which was something we’d discussed in the week, and I thought having Simon Grix in the middle really added to that.

“We took him off as a precaution, just to look after his knee, and we probably lost a bit of that dynamic and shape when he left the field.

“I thought Chester and Scott Murrell worked well together and we had QLT chiming in on the back of that.

“We probably missed Q a little bit last week and he was a marked man today, because they know the threat he poses, but we were very pleased with what he did.

“It’s work in progress, but it’s good.

“On the scoreboard it looks a really convincing win and it was in the first half.

“But it wasn’t in the second; we went away from things, dropped our standards and our ball security.

“We’ll credit the players’ attitude. I thought defensively we were on song, conceding one try and forcing them into errors.

“But I thought we could really have gone full throttle in that second half and we probably ended up at half throttle.”

Not that Marshall was entirely surprised by the way the second period panned out, with the sweltering conditions and the Eagles’ huge new 3G playing surface making for a fast, draining contest.

“It’s two weeks running we’ve played on a plastic pitch, it was 25 degrees celsius, which is pretty rare in Yorkshire, so physically it was a hard game for us,” said Marshall.

“We didn’t really build enough momentum - possession and plays - in that second half, but it was always going to be difficult.

“We were trying to score every time we touched the ball, which was because we almost had done in that first 20 minutes.”