How Doncaster Knights hope to take inspiration from Tyson Fury in Bedford Blues clash

The club’s director of rugby is a keen boxing fan, as are a number of players, and watched Fury demolish WBC heavyweight champion Deontay Wilder in Las Vegas over the weekend.

“You had to be impressed by the way that Fury went about his business throwing a lot more punches than expected and executing his fight plan well,” said the Welshman.

“As I told the players when I addressed them earlier in the week, effort plus execution equals success but effort without execution, or the other way around, equals failure. The two have to go together and that’s what we will be looking to do at Bedford.”

Knights have won their last three league games at Castle Park but have yet to win on the road in 2020 and Griffiths knows his charges will have to play well if they are to record their first double of the season.

“Bedford are a far better team than their position in the league suggests,” he said. “Like ourselves, they had a lot of injuries in the opening months of the season and no matter who you are if you are without key players on a regular basis it is bound to affect results.

“They’ve turned the corner since getting players back and if they bring their A game in attack we are going to have to defend really well because they’ve shown they are capable of running up some big scores.

“It’s always a game of two halves down there due to their sloping pitch and if they win the toss they look to play up the slope in the first half and try and keep it close and then throw everything at you in the second half.

“So, the toss can be very important although we have won down there in recent years playing up the slope first. I well remember the fact that we scored four first half tries.”

Knights still have a lengthy injury list with the likes of Ollie Stedman, Rory Pitman, Robin Hislop, Matt Smith and Curtis Wilson all ruled out, but fly-half Sam Olver and hooker Ben Hunter will both come into contention after being rested in the Championship Cup game at Nottingham.

Both Penikolo Latu, who has looked very impressive in training, and Guido Volpi are available after being cup tied. Matt Challinor and Tom Calladine were both likely to face late fitness tests on Friday.