DARYL Clark is backing the experienced teammates who are yet to feature in a pre-season friendly to hit the ground running this weekend.

The 24-year-old hooker, along with back-rower Jack Hughes, got his first outing since September in the 24-10 victory at Rochdale Hornets.

Yet to get a run under Steve Price’s regime are new signings Tyrone Roberts, Sita Akauola and Ben Murdoch-Masila, England internationals Stefan Ratchford, Kevin Brown, Chris Hill and Ben Currie, along with seasoned pros Ryan Atkins and Dom Crosby.

For 'Big Ben', Ratchford, Brown, Hill, Currie and Atkins, there will be just the one friendly against Salford Red Devils at The Halliwell Jones Stadium this Saturday to put into practice the new systems that Price and his staff have put into place since starting out in November.

Roberts, Akauola and Crosby will have no tiral games as they again sit out this weekend's action as they are not ready to play following off-season surgery.

“Everybody who is set to come back in is an international or top class, so I think they’ll hit the ground running. I don’t think they’ll need too much time to build themselves into things,” said the former Castleford Tigers number nine.

He said he is comfortable with working to the structures now in place.

“It’s a bit clearer, if anything,” he said.

“Everyone knows their roles, we know where we are going to get points.

“It’s just putting that into practice and getting that right on the field. Steve’s pretty clear on what he wants and I’m pretty clear on my role in the team.”

With the England quartet only returning to the scene since the new year, a training camp in South Wales last week provided a first opportunity ahead of the 2018 season’s start for the entire squad to work together.

“The camp was a little bit of everything really,” he said.

“There was a bit of conditioning, fitness stuff, team games, skills games, working on individual skills, then bits of stuff with the team together.

“For the first time we had all the England lads back in and all training as 13 together and swapping around.”

The South Wales option was in contrast to warm-weather camps of recent times in Tenerife and Australia.

“The weather was a bit different – misty and freezing, but I think it will be good for us,” said Clark.

“We all know the start of the year is wet conditions, boggy pitches, greasy ball.

“We’ll have to brush up on our skills for the start of the year, play the basics, play simple and hopefully spread things out once it starts drying up.”

Clark explained how the players who featured against Rochdale had gone into the game on the back of a busy week.

“We’d be training every day in the build-up to the game and it was tough,” he said.

“We expected heavy legs and a bit of fatigue in the game. Taking everything into consideration, I think the boys dug deep and showed a good performance.

“Against Salford it will be a completely different team.

“Hopefully we’ll be looking to perform a lot better than we did on Saturday with a full-strength team out.

“It was a really scrappy game and it was always going to be like that, with young players in the side, people out of position and a lot of our key players missing.

“But credit to Rochdale, they turned up and pushed us which made it a good hit-out for me and the boys.

“That kind of game was miles better for us than turning up and beating a team 40 or 50-0.

“You don’t get anything out of that, you’d be better off training.

“Rochdale gave us a really tough test, which we needed.”