Simon Grix has revealed that Hull FC’s players will catch up with John Cartwright this week. The club's new head coach will arrive in the U.K. next month, with the Australian set to speak to Hull's squad over video call ahead of the start of pre-season training this November.
The Black and Whites’ playing season finished on Saturday afternoon with a final round defeat to Catalans Dragons. However, the squad will undergo some reviews and testing later this week before signing off for several weeks with home programmes to complete before training begins once again.
That will see players touch base with Cartwright, with interim coach Simon Grix, who will step back into an assistant role next season, revealing that things are becoming more ‘regular’ with the Australian coach finishing the NRL season with Brisbane Broncos a fortnight ago. That has seen the 58-year-old begin to put his plans into place for the club’s future with a clear direction on what pre-season will look like.
"All of the lads will catch John this week as we draw our season to an end," Grix told Hull Live. "That will become more regular between now and John arriving.
"The lads have got some testing to do at the back end of the week, and then we'll start working out how John wants it all to look, really. It's a strange one; there's conflicting emotion around today (Saturday) with where we're at as a club. It's not where we want to be, but I think everyone can see that there is some good going on underneath it all with our young players.
"We just have to go through this ugly bit. Hopefully we're over the worst of it now and we can move forward and start making some plans around our future and what we want it to look like."
Already at work in terms of analysing Hull FC’s performances and getting a feel for the situation, Grix says there are no surprises for Cartwright on how the 2024 season has turned out, with the two coaches aligned in their thoughts and opinions. Grix continued: "I don't think it's surprised him given how long he's been around in coaching. He might not have seen this sort of scenario before first-hand, but he's been around enough.
"John has got a pretty nailed-on opinion. We've spoken around what we've seen after games. My assessment of the games matches up with his straight away, and that's a good sign for us moving forward, but he knows what he's getting into. He knows there's a lot of hard work ahead, but he, like us, feels the club has recruited some good pros there who are going to help us along the way. I'm excited to get behind that."
Grix, who will also touch base with returning assistant coach Andy Last this week, added: "There's plenty to talk about, and plenty of meat to put on the bone, if you like, on what pre-season needs to look like. Some of it can wait, but obviously some of it needs to be planned well in advance. We're looking forward to doing that and moving forward as a club."
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