Pre-Match Interview | Craig Lingard | Rochdale Hornets (A)

06/03/2026

Sheffield Eagles Head Coach Craig Lingard has been pleased with the start his side have made to the Betfred Championship season but insists the focus must remain on themselves ahead of Sunday’s trip to Rochdale Hornets at the Crown Oil Arena (3pm KO).

It’s been a stop-start opening to the season for the Eagles, with the Challenge Cup, a bye round and the trip to Halifax Panthers being cancelled all causing disruption to building momentum. Despite these challenges, the Eagles Head Coach has been pleased with the start his new-look side have made in 2026.

Despite playing one or two games fewer than the rest of the league, Lingard has been impressed with his side’s defence in particular, which has seen them concede only twenty-six points in their opening three outings, seeing them currently hold the best defensive record in the Betfred Championship.

As we sat down with the Eagles Head Coach earlier this week, Lingard reflected on another strong defensive showing against Hunslet last time out but stressed that we are still yet to see the best from his side in attack.

“It’s always good to win games when you’re not particularly playing too well, but to say we’re three wins from three at this stage of the season is massively pleasing for a group who are new and coming together and still learning about each other,” he said.

“We are still a little bit scratchy in certain areas, but what is really pleasing is that we have got that resilience to want to defend and win ourselves games.

“I think we gifted some field position to Hunslet at the weekend, we were giving some silly penalties away on tackle two or tackle three in our defensive sets, which allowed them (Hunslet) to pressure our line a lot. I think there were five sets just before half time where we had to defend our goal line.

“We just need to understand a bit more the knock-on effects of giving away silly penalties that either a penalty or an uncomplete set can have. It can sometimes take ten minutes for you to arm-wrestle yourselves back into a game when you do things like that, so we need to ensure we’re in a bit of a position to start building a bit of pressure that we’re ruthless in what we do.

“I think the message is understood by the players, they’re frustrated by it themselves sometimes too, so it’s pleasing that they understand that and the messages we give them, it’s just about making sure we do that on a gameday and put teams into positions they don’t want to be in.

“Hopefully we’re going to get into a good run of games week-on-week where we can try and build that bit of momentum and consistency and carry on the form that has brought us the results we’ve achieved.”

This Sunday sees the Eagles head to the Crown Oil Arena to face a Rochdale side who currently sit level on points with Sheffield. They started the new campaign like a house on fire with three wins from three, but back-to-back defeats in recent weeks against Hunslet and Whitehaven have seen the Greater Manchester side drop below the Eagles in the Betfred Championship table.

The Eagles Head Coach knows the hosts will come into Sunday’s game looking to put things right as they aim to return to winning ways, and he believes his side will need to put in a professional performance if they are to make it four league wins on the bounce.

He added, “They (Rochdale) started the season well with three straight wins, but they’ve been a bit inconsistent over recent weeks. I’m sure they’ll be frustrated off the back of them defeats to Hunslet and Whitehaven, and they’ll be wanting to get back to that form they showed across the first three weeks of the season.

“We need to make sure that we turn up and do what Hunslet and Whitehaven did to them. We know that they’ll have plenty of strengths and they’ve got some really good half backs with good kicking games that can get them around the field. They’ve also scored a few tries from kicks to the corners, so they’ve got some really dangerous outside-backs that we’ll need to be wary of.

“We’ll prepare as we always do for the best version of what Rochdale will bring. We’ll expect some sort of reaction from them. Will it be our toughest test of the season for us yet we don’t know, but it’s down to us in how we present, perform and handle ourselves on Sunday.

“If we start slow and sloppy and give them a bit of confidence, it could prove to be a really tough game for us, but if we can show up and be professional from the off, playing with some high-intensity from minute-one, we could try and make it really difficult for them.”

After a disrupted start to the league campaign, Lingard is now looking forward to a run of regular games for the Eagles, which will see them play weekly rugby over the next couple of months. With the challenges faced in each of their opening few games this year, he has been really impressed with his side’s approach and hopes they can continue their strong start this weekend.

“We’ve had different challenges every single week,” he added.

“We’ve faced them from day one of pre-season with a new squad coming together and gelling and learning about each other, trying to get them to build these relationships.

“We went to Whitehaven in Round 1 and faced the weather conditions really well, we managed to beat a Barrow side who had won three from three and had scored over one-hundred points in those games, and then the message ahead of Hunslet was there was no point beating top of the league and not turn up last week regardless of who we were playing.

“Despite not being at our best and at the top of our game on Sunday, we knew we had to dig deep to get that victory, and again I think it was another challenge in which we handled well.

“The challenge this week is to again just concentrate on us and I don’t think we’ve done that in our recent games. We’ve maybe dropped into a way in which the opposition have wanted us to play in a certain degree.

“We know we don’t need to play scoreboard pressure, thinking we need to run up a score, as we know we could come up with some errors and we don’t want to do that.

“We need to understand the process for what works for us and do that to see where it takes us.”