North Wales Crusaders’ players need to take responsibility for last weekend’s defeat to Thatto Heath Crusaders in the Challenge Cup, according to captain Kenny Baker.
The Wrexham club were knocked out of the cup at the fourth-round stage after losing 16-14 to amateur side Thatto Heath, who play in the National Conference League.
Baker said: “As players, we know that we have let the club down and we have no excuses.
“No one is more disappointed than the lads about what happened at the weekend and we owe it to everyone, especially our fans, to turn this around.
“The only way we can do that is to stick together and we spoke for an hour as a group after the game.
“There are two ways this can go. We can either start blaming each other, or we can stick together and turn this around.
“I know we can turn it around and so do the rest of the lads.
“We’ve been in pretty much every game we have played and we have come up against a lot of the so-called top sides.
“Oldham, Hunslet and Keighley are all games we could have won and, if things had gone our way, we could easily have picked up the two points in two or three games.
“We could be sitting in a very different position in the table now.
“That has obviously had an effect on confidence levels, but I’m convinced we’ll turn it around.
“We’ll be doing everything we can over the next few weeks in the lead up to the West Wales game as it’s a massive match for us.
“We really appreciate the fans turning up week in, week out to support us and, hopefully, we’ll have a good crowd down at Queensway Stadium to cheer us on in the Welsh derby.”
