From Rockdale to Rochdale

Ryan Millard and Sam Te’o

Hornets Fiji International Ryan Millard talks about his move from Rockdale, Australia to Rochdale, North West England.

Living in Rochdale, for Sam Te'o and I, the biggest shock has been the weather. We thought we were prepared for the cold of the North of England, but actually experiencing it has been something completely different.

This lesson sunk in during the week when we were at St Michael's, Bamford running a coaching a clinic with some students. While Sam and I were both rugged up looking like Eskimos, it was quite surreal to see 9 and 10 year olds in our class running around in just shirts and shorts. 

First training sessions are always interesting. Meeting the new players, meeting the staff and checking out the facilities can at times be a lot to take in. As far as introductions go, this was a fairly smooth one. The players and staff were all extremely welcoming, and as far as facilities go, we were pleasantly surprised to see the top level facilities that we’re able to utilise out at St Helen's.

The use of the all weather pitch means that training will never be cancelled due to the weather. Not sure if this is a good thing or a bad thing just yet but it does allow us to put in the hard work that we’ll surely need this year playing a higher level of rugby.

Training at St Helen's will also be a massive benefit for our squad in that being able to use the same facilities as players at the top our sport will hopefully show the boys what kind of effort is needed to take the next step in their careers and also what is needed to be successful this year.

Staying at the Flying Horse means life will never be short of a dull moment. The staff and people there have been more than friendly, which has helped the two of us to settle in.

With most of our games on a Sunday, it means we’ll miss most of the excitement along the party strip, however, Sam has already said that he is pretty keen to get amongst the karaoke crowd on a Sunday night.

Sundays’ game against Keighley was ‘a game of two halves’ as they say. Once again we were the better team in the first half. Going into half time leading 14-10, with that score-line flattering the opposition. However, in the second half we seemed to implode. Costly errors and penalties were our downfall. Unlike last week our effort wasn’t there in the second half and we were really disappointed about that.

This weekend will be a tough test up against a top side in Featherstone, we’ll have to put in plenty of hard work at training in the lead up. I’m confident we’ll be able to turn things around, if we’re willing to do the work.