Jordan Johnstone’s honest Hull FC assessment as he aims to build on encouraging first year
Jordan Johnstone hopes to be able to build on an encouraging debut campaign with Hull FC next year.
The 23-year-old made 17 appearances last season as he shared the hooker position with skipper Danny Houghton.
He received plenty of plaudits along the way for his performances, too, particularly under Andy Last in the latter stages of the season, in which he was selected as the starting hooker and asked to get the Black and Whites off on the right foot before making way for Houghton later in the game.
Johnstone admits he didn’t expect to play such a key role for the club last season after joining from Championship club Widnes Vikings and he believes he still has plenty of room for improvement.
However, as he prepares to start training once more, this time under Brett Hodgson who he knows from his days at the Halton Stadium, the 23-year-old has ambitions of kicking on once again.
“Coming up from the Championship and having Danny there who is well regarded, I thought it was going to be a transition year,” Johnstone said.
“I feel like I really established myself towards the backend of the year. Don’t get me wrong, there was definitely parts of some performances where I walked away thinking ‘I need to be better than that’, but on a positive there’s a lot of good things I thought I did which I can take forward into next year and build on.
“There were aspects of my game last season, my running game just seemed to disappear, I don’t know if that was the role I was playing or not, but that’s one of my goals next year to improve that and get on the back of them big forwards and be more dangerous around the ruck.
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“I don’t think I can be classed as young any more, I’m 23 and I’ve played nearly 100 games. It’s all about playing and the only way I’m going to improve is by playing every week and hopefully I can do that next year.
“I want to play a little bit longer and share that workload a little bit more.”
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