UNIVERSITY student Pat Atkinson has passed the test of Ilkley RFC's head of rugby Rhys Morgan, who has been impressed with the youngster's performances since signing for the club earlier in the season.

Morgan said: "We took a gamble with Pat. When he first played, he had trained once on the Thursday night and he got put in the team on the Saturday.

"But Pat's been great for us. He scored a lovely try last weekend. Ordinarily he's a fly-half over at Liverpool (University) but we've made changes to the backline.

"Sometimes we've played him in the full-back position to free Ben Magee up a little bit more and we've rotated him during the course of the game.

"He's been a major asset to us, he's a very talented young man and a great player."

Ilkley face a difficult game at runaway league leaders Preston Grasshoppers on Saturday but Morgan is hoping to draw inspiration from the reverse fixture.

He said: "We ran them close at home and with about ten minutes to go, we were two scores up.

"It is going to be a tough game but with the patterns and variety of play that we used last time, we showed that we're a difficult team to control."

Morgan criticised the 4G pitch at Keighley that Ilkley played on two weeks ago against Wirral yet he was enthusiastic about the artificial surface at Preston, despite their opponents having won all 10 of their home games there.

He enthused: "We are a very mobile team and the strength of the playing pitch may well suit us.

"Wirral are a very similar team to us whereas Preston are a bigger set of lads and I think it will benefit us to play them on 4G rather than a loose pitch."

Ilkley have only won three of their nine away league games this season but Morgan believes that can be put down to availability problems.

He explained: "A lot of the games that we've played away, we've had guys that have been unavailable due to weddings and family commitments.

"It's been a tough season for us with availability and numerous injuries but over the last few weeks we've been able to put out a regular team and we've got some decent results."

In terms of this weekend, Morgan was hopeful that his son Elliott would make his return from the rib injury that kept him out of last week's Harrogate game but his youngest Blake is still absent with medial ligament damage.

Prop Oliver Holtam is expected to miss out through injury too but Morgan is confident that the squad for the Preston game could be one of Ilkley's strongest this season.