Hull Seahawks: Coach Matty Davies on defenceman, Dave Phillips

Hull Seahawks coach Matty Davies discusses the impact had by GB defenceman Dave Phillips

Transcript

00:00Matty, obviously one of the big signings that you made during the summer, which has probably

00:10taken on more importance given what happened subsequently with Declan Barmer in a way.

00:14Davey Phillips, obviously it was a sort of major signing, obviously created a lot of

00:19talking points for people online and all that as it tends to. But already, I know he was

00:26away for the first weekend with GB, but you saw what he can bring to your team on that

00:31last week of pre-season. Just what is it that he does add to your team that was perhaps

00:35not there last year?

00:36Yeah, I mean, overall, it's just the experience Dave has is invaluable. At this level especially,

00:45I mean, there's not many that I've played, there's probably no-one that's played as many

00:49games as the quality that Dave has played. So straight away, it just gives you that quality

00:58in general. But I think what we found this week with Dave is his skating has always been

01:04a big plus for Dave. The way he can close the gap, he really is elite. Like I said,

01:11obviously losing Declan and Brock is a loss, but I think when you bring someone like Dave

01:16in, I think actually defensively, we look a lot more solid and obviously Heywood helps

01:22that also. So yeah, look, I think Dave is massive for us and he's an old lad, he cares

01:27about the club, he wants the club to do well, which is another plus point for us. So yeah,

01:33Dave is going to be big and obviously, I've got to be smart about how I manage Dave and

01:38obviously, being 37, you've got to obviously, it's a long year, it's a lot of minutes. And

01:45again, another part of it is he's having enough good team and that we can spread them

01:50minutes evenly, which again, is not what we had last year. So yeah, Dave's been great

01:56this weekend and yeah, I think he's just going to keep getting better and adding.