Hull KR's play-off tussle has priceless prize but Rovers opt for measured philosophy

Hull Kingston Rovers coach Willie Peters does not want his men to be distracted by league position when they go into Saturday's derby against Hull FC.

Rovers are in the thick of a tight race at the top of the Super League, with clubs battling for positions in the play-off zone, while Hull FC are second-bottom and still a long way adrift of sides above them. Peters questioned whether Rovers had thought about league position last weekend when they eventually lost on golden-point to Catalans Dragons.

Peters said: "Did we look at ladder position last week? You're always looking for the reasons why you get certain performances and periods in games. There was a lot of talk that we could go to second. At the end of the day, what we review ourselves on is performance so that's what we've got to keep doing, and not looking at the ladder. The ladder will take care of itself. We'll put ourselves in a strong position if we meet our KPIs and things that we value.

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"When you look at the competition, you want it to be like this. It's very competitive now, regardless of who's playing who. You look at London and what they did against Leeds and they nearly stole that game. Castleford winning at St Helens was a great achievement."

The respective league positions, and Rovers' convincing wins against FC earlier this season, mean that the visitors will go into this derby as favourites though, despite their hosts' recent improvements in performance levels.

Peters said: "Anything can happen in derby games but I also understand that you've got to have a favourite and an underdog in sport. That's why it's enjoyable for some people - not that we can have a bet! For us, we know what we are capable of when we put our strongest performance together. Certainly Hull FC have improved since we played them last time but it's about what we can control. If we are the favourites, fine, we won't be looking at much around that but we certainly will be looking at performance and standards and will judge ourselves on that."