‘Proud’ Wigan St Pats star Conor Taylor makes international debut with England Community Lions
Wigan St Pats’ Conor Taylor has come off the back of an impressive season domestically that the half-back claimed 22 tries and kept the famous amateur club competitive in Division One of the National Conference.
He has now had the opportunity to travel out to Perth with the England Community Lions and reflected, "Everyone's getting to know one another. We're getting that cohesion within the group that we need to go forward and perform well in test matches.
"We've trained hard, we've had some good times. Everything's been really positive so far.
"There's competition for places across all the positions, myself included with the half-backs, but there's that mutual respect."
Conor pulled on the international jersey for the first time on Saturday as the Lions made their bow against Western Australia Chairman's XIII.
"It was a proud moment,” he said. “My dad played before me at a good level and it's recognition for that. My partner Lucy back home, my mum, the club at St Pats, I have had an endless amount of support. It was a proud moment for me but it was a proud moment for them as well.
"It's just about enjoying it and hoping that you can, as far as your amateur career goes, have more of those moments. It's definitely up there."
That game brought a narrow loss thanks to a 68th minute try from the hosts and a last minute disallowed score from the Lions.
And Taylor remains pragmatic. "We probably need to look at ourselves before we look elsewhere. We had ample opportunities within that game. It was our own execution - we just didn't execute,” he explained.
"We're an experienced squad, but inexperienced as a team together and it's about finding that cohesion and being connected in certain situations.
"We'll have our review before the next game and the video never lies. It's just about taking ownership on certain things that have happened in the game and cleaning up certain areas of our game.
"We can't start getting involved in if, buts and maybes and third party factors. You know we've just got to focus on ourselves.
"There's enough quality in this group to nail that before this next test I've no doubt about that. The coaching staff know what they're doing know what we have to do. They've given us the right tools to implement and it's up to us to do it."
The Lions play the first of two tests against Western Australia on Thursday, 12pm UK time and the match will be available to view HERE.