Newcastle Thunder’s Simon Finnigan is wary of the threat Workington Town will pose to his team in Sunday’s League 1 meeting, with the Tynesiders' head coach impressed with what he has seen of Chris Thorman’s team in 2020.

Town delivered a hugely impressive performance in their 24-6 opening day triumph over Keighley Cougars, with superb defensive resolve and ruthless efficiency in attack which leaves Newcastle’s boss expecting a serious challenge.

“I’ve watched a lot of Workington in pre-season and in the early Challenge Cup games and they look good," he said. "Like myself, Chris will have needed the pre-season to bring in some of his own philosophies and his own players in and you can clearly see that it is working.

“They are a really good side to watch, they play really good attacking rugby and they are scoring points but they also have this defensive resolve, which they possibly didn’t have last year and was really good at the weekend, so Chris has managed to instil that.

“Everything I have seen so far has proved they will be up and around the top of the league.

"They are a good side, particularly in their middles with the way they are moving the ball about, and they have some really good personnel.

“Hanley Dawson, who didn’t play for them last year, looks handy, Conor Fitzsimmons is playing well and the two halves Doran and Forber are all good players.

“This will be a hard game for us; we are going to have to be good to be in the game and try and get the result.

"Workington are a good attacking team and they will enjoy playing on our fast track with the way that they play.”

Taking an opening day win against Coventry, Thunder were made to work hard for their two points, with Finnigan lamenting a lack of consistency in his side’s performance, while praising the quality of the opposition his team have come up against.

“We’re plugging away is probably the best way to put it," he said. "We are doing some good things but then we’re just not quite at it in some other areas and we keep picking up little niggles and injuries in games where we have had to move people around and out of position.

“That’s not an excuse because of the teams we’ve played so far, Keighley were good against us and Coventry were excellent, so I don’t want to take anything away from them, but we are scratching around a bit trying to find our fluency.

“We will, because we are finding it in games, just not consistently enough.”